Their walk was carrying them nearer and nearer the old man's door. "There he is now," whispered Esther Ann. "I'll go first and you come right up behind me. Here, take your apple." She thrust the fruit into Edna's hand and hastened her own pace a little. Edna's heart began to beat fast, for surely Nathan Keener was anything but an attractive figure as he sat there glowering and muttering, his gaunt hands resting on his knotted stick, and his grizzly old face wearing a wrathful look.