"I am going to take you home," he said gently. And a few minutes later he began to tell her about it. "He was dead when I got there. They think it was an accident; and it is best they should. I am afraid I'll have to explain to my wife, because she saw your apprehension. But nobody else need know. Except—I must tell Dr. Lavendar, of course; but not until after the funeral. There is no use complicating things. But other people can just think it was an accident. It was, in one way. He was insane. Everybody is, who does—that. Poor Samuel! Poor Mrs. Wright! I could not leave them; but I thought you had gone home, or I would have come. Mrs. Richie, promise me one thing: promise me not to feel it was your fault."

She dropped her face in her hands. "Not my fault! ... I killed him."



CHAPTER XXIV

"He was cleaning his father's pistol, and it went off—" the poor, dazed mother said, over and over. The father said nothing. He sat, his elbow on his knee, his forehead resting in the palm of his hand. Sometimes his heavy eyes glanced up, but he did not lift his head. He had hardly spoken since the accident. Then, he had said to William King:

"I suppose he undertook to clean my revolver. He always did things at queer times. I suppose it went off. It had a tricky hammer. It went off. By accident—not... He hadn't any reason to... He said, only yesterday, when he got back, that he couldn't stay away from home any longer. He said he had to come home. So, you see, there isn't any reason to think... He was cleaning it. And it went off. The hammer was tricky."

The slow, bewildered words were spoken with his eyes fixed blindly on the floor. At the sight of his dreadful composure, his wife's loud weeping died into a frightened whimper. He did not repeat the explanation. Dr. Lavendar heard it from Mrs. Wright, as she knelt beside the poor, stony father, patting his hand and mothering him.

"It was an accident, Dr. Lavendar. Sammy took a notion to clean his father's pistol. And it went off. And oh, he had just come back to us again. And he was so glad to get home. He went to church yesterday morning. I didn't have to urge him. He wanted to go. I feel sure he had begun to think of his Saviour. Yes; and he wanted to go back to the bank, and write up his ledgers; he was so happy to be among us again. Oh, Dr, Lavendar, he said to me, 'I just had to come home, mother, to you and father,' And I kissed him, and I said, 'Yes, my darling; home is the best place,' And he kissed me, Dr, Lavendar. Sammy was not one to do that—a big boy, you know. Oh, I am so glad he wanted to come home. And now the Lord has taken him. Oh, Samuel, try, try to say: 'Blessed be the name of the Lord!'"

The senior warden stared in silence at her plump hand, shaking and trembling on his knee. Dr. Lavendar did not urge any word of resignation. He sat beside the stricken pair, hearing the mother's pitiful babble, looking at the father's bent gray head, saying what he could of Sam—his truthfulness, his good nature, his kindness. "I remember once he spent a whole afternoon making a splint for Danny's leg. And it was a good splint," said Dr. Lavendar. Alas! how little he could find to say of the young creature who was a stranger to them all!

Dr. Lavendar stayed with them until noon. He had been summoned just as he was sitting down to breakfast, and he had gone instantly, leaving Mary wringing her hands at the double distress of a dreadful calamity and Dr. Lavendar's going without his breakfast. When he saw William King he asked no questions, except:

"Who will tell his grandfather?"

But of course there was only one person to tell Mr. Benjamin Wright, and Dr. Lavendar knew it. "But you must come with me, William; Benjamin is very frail."

"Yes;" said William King; "only you've got to have something to eat first."

And that gave Dr. Lavendar the chance to ask Mrs. Wright for some breakfast, which made her stop crying, poor soul, for a little while.

As Goliath pulled them slowly up the hill, William told part of his part of the story. He had dropped in to the Wrights' the night before to say how-do-you-do. "It was nearly ten. I only stayed a few minutes; then I went off. I had got as far as the gate, and I was—was fixing my lantern, and I thought I heard a shot. And I said—'What's that?' And I stood there, sort of holding my breath, you know; I couldn't believe it was a shot. And then they called. When I got to the house, it was all over. It was instantaneous. Samuel told me that Sam had been fooling with his revolver, and—"

"Yes;" said Dr. Lavendar; "that's what Eliza told me."

Both men were silent. Then Dr. Lavendar said "Will it kill Benjamin?"

"I don't know. I don't know;" the doctor said, sighing. "Oh, Dr. Lavendar, why does the Lord hit the innocent over the guilty's shoulder? The boy is out of it; but his father and mother and grandfather, and—and others, they have got to bear it."

"Why, Willy, my boy," said Dr. Lavendar, "that's where the comfort of it is. It means we're all one—don't you see? If we suffer in the boy's suffering or wrong-doing, it is because we and he are one in Christ Jesus."

"Yes, sir," said William respectfully. But he did not understand.

When they reached The Top, it seemed to take them a long time to hitch Goliath. It was Dr. Lavendar who got himself together first and said calmly, "Come, William."

The front door was open, and the two bearers of heavy news entered unannounced. Benjamin Wright was in the dining-room, where the shutters were bowed to keep out the heat. He had taken off his hat, and was pottering about among his canaries, scolding Simmons and swearing at the weather. Dr. Lavendar and William, coming from the white glare of sunshine, could hardly distinguish him as he shuffled back and forth among the shadows, except when he crossed the strip of dazzling green light between the bowed shutters, Dr. Lavendar stopped on the threshold; William stood a little behind him.

Mr. Wright was declaiming sonorously:

"—Did you ever see the Devil, With his wooden leg and shovel, A-scratching up the gravel—"

He paused to stick a cuttlefish between the bars of a cage, and catching sight of the first figure, instantly began to snarl a reproach:

"I might have been in my grave for all you know, Edward Lavendar; except you'd have had to 'give hearty thanks for the good example' of the deceased. What a humbug the burial service is—hey? Same thing for an innocent like me, or for a senior warden. Come in. Simmons! Whiskey"—

He stopped short; William had moved in the shadows. "Why, that's Willy King," he said; and dropped the cuttlefish. "Something's wrong. Two black coats at this hour of the day mean something. Well! Out with it! What's happened?"

"Benjamin," said Dr, Lavendar, coming into the room, "Sam's Sam—"

"Keep Willy King out!" commanded the very old man in a high, peevish voice. "I'm not going to die of it. He's—killed himself? Well; it's my fault. I angered him," He took up his hat, clutching the brim with shaking hands and pulling it fiercely down over his eyes. "Keep Willy off! I'm not—I'm not—"

Simmons caught him as he lurched back into a chair, and Dr. Lavendar bent over him, his old face moving with tears.

"It was an accident, Benjamin, either of the body or the soul—it doesn't matter which."

William King, standing behind the chair that held the forlorn and quivering heap, ventured gently: "Samuel says that Sam was cleaning his pistol, and—"

But Dr. Lavendar held up his hand and William was silent.

"Hold your tongue;" said Benjamin Wright. "Lavendar knows I don't like lies. Yes; my fault. I've done it again. Second time. Second time. Simmons! Get these—gentlemen some—whiskey."

Simmons, his yellow jaws mumbling with terror, looked at Dr. Lavendar, who nodded. But even as the old man got himself together, the brain flagged; William saw the twist come across the mouth, and the eyes blink and fix.

It was not a very severe shock, and after the first moments of alarm, the doctor said quietly; "He is not dying."

But he was, of course, perfectly helpless and silenced; his miserable eyes seemed to watch them, fixedly, as they carried him to his bed, and did what little could be done; but he could make no demand, and offer no explanation.

It was not until late in the afternoon that William King had time to go to the Stuffed Animal House. He had had a gravely absorbing day; not only because of the Wrights' pitiful demands upon his time, but because of the necessary explanations and evasions to Old Chester. To his wife evasions were impossible, he gave her an exact statement of the facts as he knew them. Martha, listening, and wiping her eyes, was shocked into fairness and sympathy.

"But, William, she was not to blame!"

"That's what I told her."

"Poor thing!" said Martha; "why, I feel as if I ought to go right up and comfort her."

"No, no; it isn't necessary," William said. "I'll go, on my way to The Top."

Mrs. King drew back, coldly, and sympathy wavered into common sense. "Well, perhaps it's just as well you should. I'm afraid I couldn't make her feel that she had no responsibility at all,—as you seem to think. That's one thing about me, I may not be perfect, but I am sincere; I think she ought to have stopped Sam's love-making months ago!—Unless perhaps she returned it?" Martha ended, in a tone that made William redden with silent anger. But he forgot his anger and everything else when he came into the long parlor at the Stuffed Animal House, late that afternoon.

"I've thought of you all day," he said, taking Helena's hand and looking pitifully into her face. It was strangely changed. Something was stamped into it that had never been there before.... Weeks ago, a hurricane of anger had uprooted content and vanity and left confusion behind it. But there was no confusion now; it had cleared into terror.

William found her walking restlessly up and down; she gave him a look, and then stood quite still, shrinking a little to one side, as if she expected a blow. Something in that frightened, sidewise attitude made him hesitate to tell her of Benjamin Wright; she hardly knew the old gentleman, but it would startle her, the doctor reasoned. And yet, when very carefully, almost casually, he said that Mr. Wright had had a slight shock—"his life is not in danger just now," said William, "but he can't speak;"—she lifted her head and looked at him, drawing a full breath, as if eased of some burdening thought.

"Will he ever speak?" she said.

"I don't know; I think so. But probably it is the beginning of the end; poor old man!"

"Poor old man," she repeated mechanically; "poor old man!"

"I haven't told Dr. Lavendar about—last night," William said; "but if you have no objection I would like to just hint at—at a reason. He would know how entirely blameless you were."

"Oh, no! please, please, don't!" she said. And William King winced at his own clumsiness; her reticence made him feel as if he had been guilty of an impropriety, almost of an indelicacy.

After a pause he said gently, that he hoped she would sit with Mrs. King and himself at the funeral on Wednesday.

Helena caught her hands together convulsively; "I go? Oh, no, no! I am not going."

The doctor was greatly distressed. "I know it is hard for you, but I'm afraid Samuel and his wife will be so hurt if you don't come. They know the boy was fond of you—you were always so good to him. I don't like to urge you, because I know it pains you but—"

"Oh, I can't—I can't!"

She turned so white that William had not the heart to say anything more. But that same kind heart ached so for the father and mother, that he was grateful to her when he saw her on Wednesday, among the people gathering at the church. "Just like her unselfishness!" he said to himself.

All Old Chester, saddened and awed, came to show its sympathy for the stricken parents, and its pity, if nothing more, for the dead boy. But Helena, ghastly pale, had no room in her mind for either pity or sympathy. She heard Mr. Dilworth's subdued voice directing her to a pew, and a few minutes afterwards found herself sitting between Dr. and Mrs. King. Martha greeted her with an appropriate sigh; but Mrs., Richie did not notice her. There was no sound in the waiting church except once in a while a long-drawn breath, or the faint rustle of turning leaves as some one looked for the burial service. The windows with their little border of stained glass, were tilted half-way open this hot morning, and sometimes the silence was stirred by the brush of sparrows in the ivy under the sills. On the worn carpet in the chancel the sunshine lay in patches of red and blue and purple, that flickered noiselessly when the wind moved the maple leaves outside; it was all so quiet that Helena could hear her own half-sobbing breaths. After a while, the first low note of the organ crept into the stillness, and as it deepened into a throbbing chord, there was the grave rustle of a rising congregation. Then from the church door came the sudden shock of words:

"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord."

Helena, clutching at the back of the next pew, stood up with the rest. Suddenly she swayed, as though the earth was moving under her feet.... The step of the bearers came heavily up the aisle. Her eyes fled from what they carried—("oh, was he so tall?")—and then shuddered back again to stare.

Martha King touched her arm; "We sit down now."

Helena sat down. Far outside her consciousness words were being said: "Now is Christ risen—" but she did not hear them; she did not see the people about her. She only saw, before the chancel, that long black shape. After a while the doctor's wife touched her again; "Here we stand up." Mechanically, she rose; her lips were moving in a terrified whisper, and Martha King, glancing at her sidewise, looked respectfully away. "Praying," the good woman thought; and softened a little.

But Helena was far from prayer. As she stared at that black thing before the chancel, her selfishness uncovered itself before her eyes and showed its nakedness.

The solid ground of experience was heaving and staggering under her feet, and in the midst of the elemental tumult, she had her first dim glimpse of responsibility. It was a blasting glimpse, that sent her cowering back to assertions of her right to her own happiness. Thirteen years ago Lloyd had made those assertions, and she had accepted them and built them into a shelter against the assailing consciousness that she was an outlaw, pillaging respect and honor from her community. Until now nothing had ever shaken that shelter. Nor had its dark walls been pierced by the disturbing light of any heavenly vision declaring that when personal happiness conflicts with any great human ideal, the right to claim such happiness is as nothing compared to the privilege of resigning it. She had not liked the secrecy which her shelter involved, no refined temperament likes secrecy. But the breaking of the law, in itself, had given her no particular concern; behind her excusing platitudes she had always been comfortable enough. Even that whirlwind of anger at Benjamin Wright's contempt had only roused her to buttress her shelter with declarations that she was not harming anybody. But sitting there between William King and his wife, in the midst of decorously mournful Old Chester, she knew she could never say that any more; not only because a foolish and ill-balanced youth had been unable to survive a shattered ideal, but because she began suddenly and with consternation to understand that the whole vast fabric of society rested on that same ideal. And she had been secretly undermining it! Her breath caught, strangling, in her throat. In the crack of the pistol and the crash of ruined family life she heard for the first time the dreadful sound of the argument of her life to other lives; and at that sound the very foundation of those excuses of her right to happiness, rocked and crumbled and left her selfishness naked before her eyes.

It was so unbearable, that instantly she sought another shelter: obedience to the letter of the Law—Marriage. To marry her fellow outlaw seemed to promise both shelter and stability—for in her confusion she mistook marriage for morality. At once! Never mind if he were tired of her; never mind if she must humble what she called her pride, and plead with him to keep his word; never mind anything— except this dreadful revelation: that no one of us may do that which, if done by all, would destroy society. Yes; because she had not understood that, a boy had taken his own life.... Marriage! That was all she thought of; then, suddenly, she cowered—the feet of the bearers again.

"I will be married," she said with dry lips, "oh, I will-I will!" And Martha King, looking at her furtively, thought she prayed.

It was not a prayer, it was only a promise. For with the organic upheaval into her soul of the primal fact of social responsibility, had come the knowledge of guilt.

But the Lord was not in the earthquake.



CHAPTER XXV

Benjamin Wright lay in his great bed, that had four mahogany posts like four dark obelisks. ... He had not spoken distinctly since the night of his seizure, though in about a fortnight he began to babble something which nobody could understand. Simmons said he wanted his birds, and brought two cages and hung them in the window, where the roving, unhappy eyes could rest upon them. He mumbled fiercely when he saw them, and Simmons cried out delightedly: "There now, he's better— he's swearin' at me!" The first intelligible words he spoke were those that had last passed his lips: "M-m-my f-f—," and from his melancholy eyes a meagre tear slid into a wrinkle and was lost.

Dr. Lavendar, sitting beside him, put his old hand over the other old hand, that lay with puffed fingers motionless on the coverlet. "Yes, Benjamin, it was your fault, and mine, and Samuel's. We were all responsible because we did not do our best for the boy. But remember, his Heavenly Father will do His best."

"M-m-my f—" the stammering tongue began again, but the misery lessened in the drawn face. Any denial of the fact he tried to state would have maddened him. But Dr. Lavendar never denied facts; apart from the question of right and wrong, he used to say it was not worth while. He accepted old Mr. Wright's responsibility as, meekly, he had accepted his own, but he saw in it an open door.

And that was why he went that evening to the Wright house. It was a melancholy house. When their father was at home, the little girls whispered to each other and slipped away to their rooms, and when they were alone with their mother, they quivered at the sight of her tears that seemed to flow and flow and flow. Her talk was all of Sam's goodness and affection and cleverness. "He read such learned books! Why, that very last afternoon, when we were all taking naps, he was reading a big leather-covered book from your father's library, all about the Nations. And he could make beautiful poetry," she would tell them, reading over and over with tear-blinded eyes some scraps of verse she had found among the boy's possessions. But most of all she talked of Sam's gladness in getting home, and how strange it was he had taken that notion to clean that dreadful pistol. No wonder Lydia and her sisters kept to themselves, and wandered, little scared, flitting creatures, through the silent house, or out into the garden, yellowing now and gorgeous in the September heats and chills.

Dr. Lavendar came in at tea-time, as he had lately made a point of doing, and sat down beside Mrs. Wright in Sam's chair.

"Samuel," said he, when supper was over and the little girls had slipped away; "you must comfort your father. Nobody else can."

The senior warden drew in his breath with a start.

"He blames himself, Samuel."

"Blames himself! What reason has he got to blame himself? It was my fault."

"Oh, my dear," said the poor mother, "you couldn't tell that he was going to clean your pistol."

Samuel Wright looked heavily over at Dr. Lavendar.

"Well," said the old minister, "he gave Sam the money to go away. I suppose that's on his mind, for one thing. He may think something went wrong, you know."

"Oh," broke in the mother, beginning to cry, "he Was so glad to get home; he said to me the night he got back, 'Mother, I just had to come home to you and father; I couldn't stay away any longer.' I'm sure he couldn't have said anything more loving, could he? And he kissed me. You know he wasn't one to kiss much. Yes; he couldn't bear to be away from us. He said so."

"Go and see him, Samuel," urged Dr. Lavendar. "You, too, have lost a son, so you know now how he has felt for thirty-two years. His was a loss for which he knows he was to blame. It is a cruel knowledge, Sam?"

"It is," said the senior warden. "It is."

"Then go and comfort him."

Samuel went. A great experience had wiped the slate so clean of all the years of multiplications and additions of resentment and mortification, that the thought of facing his father did not stir his dull indifference to the whole dreary matter. When Simmons saw him coming up the garden path, he said under his breath, "Bless the Lawd!" Then, mindful of hospitality, offered whiskey.

"Certainly not," said Samuel Wright; and the old habit of being displeased made his voice as pompous as if he cared—one way or the other. "Can you make him understand that I'm here, Simmons? Of course, I won't go up-stairs unless he wants to see me."

"He'll want to see you, suh, he'll want to see you," said Simmons. He's right smart to-day. He kin use his left hand. He dun shuck that fist at me this mawnin'. Oh, laws, yes, he'll want to see you."

"Go and ask him."

Simmons went, and came back triumphantly. "I tole him. He didn't say nothin'. So it's all right"

The visitor went ponderously up-stairs. On the first landing he caught his breath, and stood still.

Directly opposite him, across the window of the upper hall was a horsehair-covered sofa, with great, shiny, slippery mahogany ends. Samuel Wright put his hand up to his throat as if he were smothering.... He used to lie on that sofa on hot afternoons and study his declensions. It had no springs; he felt the hardness of it in his bones, now, and the scratch of the horsehair on his cheek. Instantly words, forgotten for a generation, leaped up:

Stella Stellae Stellae Stellam—

Mechanically his eyes turned to the side wall; an old secretary stood there, its glass doors curtained within by faded red rep. He had kept his fishing-tackle in its old cupboard; the book of flies was in a green box on the second shelf, at the left. Samuel looked at those curtained doors, and at the shabby case of drawers below them where the veneer had peeled and blistered under the hot sun of long afternoons, and the sudden surge of youth into his dry, middle-aged mind, was suffocating. Something not himself impelled him on up the half-flight from the landing, each step creaking under his heavy tread; drew him across the hall, laid his hand on the door of the secretary.... Yes; there they were: the green pasteboard box, the flannel book to hold the flies. He put out his hand stealthily and lifted the book;—rust and moth-eaten rags.

The shock of that crumbling touch and the smell of dust made him gasp- and instantly he was back again in middle age. He shut the secretary quietly, and looked around him. On the right side of the hall was a closed door. His door. The door out of which he had rushed that windy March night thirty-two years ago. How hot with passion he had been then! How cold he was now. On the other side of the hall a door was ajar; behind it was his father. He looked at it with sombre indifferent eyes; then pushed it open and entered. He saw a little figure, sunk in the heap of pillows on the big bed; a little shrunken figure, without a wig, frightened-eyed, and mumbling. Samuel Wright came forward with the confidence of apathy. As he stood at the foot of the bed, dully looking down, the thick tongue broke into a whimpering stammer:

"M-m-my f—"

And at that, something seemed to melt in the poor locked heart of the son.

"Father!" said Samuel Wright passionately. He stooped and took the helpless fingers, and held them hard in his own trembling hand. For a moment he could not speak. Then he said some vague thing about getting stronger. He did not know what he said; he was sorry, as one is sorry for a suffering child. The figure in the bed looked at him with scared eyes. One of the pillows slipped a little, and Samuel pulled it up, clumsily to be sure, but with the decided touch of pity and purpose, the touch of the superior. That fixing the pillow behind the shaking helpless head, swept away the last traces of the quarrel. He sat down by the gloomy catafalque of a bed, and when Benjamin Wright began to say again, "M-m-my f—" he stopped him with a gesture.

"No, father; not at all. He would have gone away anyhow, whether you had given him the money or not. No; it was my fault," the poor man said, dropping back into his own misery. "I was hard on him. Even that last night, I spoke harshly to him. Sometimes I think that possibly I didn't entirely understand him."

He dropped his head in his hand, and stared blankly at the floor. He did not see the dim flash of humor in the old eyes.



CHAPTER XXVI

The day that Sam Wright was buried Helena had written to Lloyd Pryor. She must see him at once, she said. He must let her know when he would come to Old Chester—or she would come to him, if he preferred. "It is most important," she ended, "most important." She did not say why; she could not write of this dreadful thing that had happened. Still less could she put down on paper that sense of guilt, so alarming in its newness and so bewildering in its complexity. She was afraid of it, she was even ashamed of it; she and Lloyd had never talked about—things like that. So she made no explanation. She only summoned him with a peremptoriness which had been absent from their relations for many years. His answer, expected and despaired of, came three weeks later.

It was early in October one rainy Friday afternoon. Helena and David were in the dining-room. She had helped him with his lessons,—for it was Dr. Lavendar's rule that Monday's lessons were to be learned on Friday; and now they had come in here because the old mahogany table was so large that David could have a fine clutter of gilt-edged saucers from his paint-box spread all around. He had a dauby tumbler of water beside him, and two or three Godey's Lady's Books awaiting his eager brush. He was very busy putting gamboge on the curls of a lady whose petticoats, by a discreet mixture of gamboge and Prussian blue, were a most beautiful green.

"Don't you think crimson-lake is pretty red for her lips?" Helena asked, resting her cheek on his thatch of yellow hair.

"No, ma'am," David said briefly; and rubbed on another brushful. Helena put an eager arm about him and touched his ear with her lips; David sighed, and moved his head. "No; I wasn't going to," she reassured him humbly; it was a long time since she had dared to offer the "forty kisses." It was then that Sarah laid the mail down on the table; a newspaper and—Lloyd Pryor's letter.

Helena's start and gasp of astonishment were a physical pang. For a long time afterwards she could not bear the smell of David's water- colors; gamboge, Chinese white and Prussian blue made her feel almost faint. She took up the letter and turned it over and over, her pallor changing into a violent rush of color; then she fled up-stairs to her own room, tearing the letter open as she ran.

Her eyes blurred as she began to read it, and she had to stop to wipe away some film of agitation. But as she read, the lines cleared sharply before her. The beginning, after the "Dear Nelly," was commonplace enough. He was sorry not to have answered her letter sooner; he had been frightfully busy; Alice had not been well, and letter-writing, as she knew, was not his strong point. Besides, he had really expected to be in Old Chester before this, so that they could have talked things over. It was surprising how long Frederick had hung on, poor devil. In regard to the future, of course—here the page turned. Helena gasped, folding it back with trembling fingers: "Of course, conditions have changed very much since we first considered the matter. My daughter's age presents an embarrassment which did not exist a dozen years ago. Now, if we carried out our first arrangement, some kind friend would put two and two together, and drop a hint, and Alice would ask questions. Nevertheless"—again she turned a page— nevertheless, Lloyd Pryor was prepared to carry out his promise if she wished to hold him to it. She might think it over, he said, and drop him a line, and he was, as ever, hers, L. P.

Helena folded the letter, laying the edges straight with slow exactness.... He would carry out his promise if she held him to it. She might drop him a line on the subject.... While her dazed mind repeated his words, she was alertly planning her packing: "Can Sarah fold my skirts properly?" she thought; but even as she asked herself the question, she was saying aloud, "Marry him? Never!" She slapped the letter across her knee. Ah, he knew that. He knew that her pride would come to his rescue! The tears stung in her eyes, but they did not fall.... Sarah must begin the next morning; but it would take a week to close everything up.... Well; if he had ceased to want her, she did not want him! What a letter she would write him; what indifference, what assurances that she did not wish to hold him to that "first arrangement"; what anger, what reproach! Yes; she would "drop him that line"! Then it came over her that perhaps it would be more cutting not to write to him at all. She raised her rag of pride but almost instantly it fell shuddering to the dust—Sam Wright....

She sat up in her chair, trembling. Yes; she and David would start on Monday; she would meet Lloyd in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and be married that morning. Her trunks could follow her; she would not wait for the packing. George must do up the furniture in burlap; a railroad journey across the mountains would injure it very much, unless it was carefully packed.

She rose hurriedly, and taking her travelling-bag out of the wardrobe, began to put various small necessities into it. Suddenly she stopped short in her work, then went over to the mantel-piece, and leaning her arms upon it looked into the mirror that hung lengthwise above it. The face that gazed back at her from its powdery depths was thinner; it was paler: it was—not so young. She looked at it steadily, with frightened eyes; there were lines on the forehead; the skin was not so firm and fresh. She spared herself no details of the change, and as she acknowledged them, one by one, the slow, painful red spread to her temples. Oh, it was horrible, it was disgusting, this aging of the flesh! The face in the mirror looked back at her helplessly; it was no weapon with which to fight Lloyd Pryor's weariness! Yet she must fight it, somehow. It was intolerable to think that he did not want her; it was more intolerable to think that she could not match his mood by declaring that she did not want him. "But that's only because of Sam Wright," she assured herself, staring miserably at the white face in the glass; "if it wasn't for that—! But I must get more sleep; I mustn't let myself look so worn out."

In such cross-currents of feeling, one does not think consecutively. Desires and motives jumbled together until Helena said to herself desperately, that she would not try to answer Lloyd's letter for a day or two. After all, as he had so clearly indicated, there was no hurry; she would think it over a little longer.

But as she thought, the next day and the next, the wound to her affection and her vanity grew more unbearable, and her feeling of responsibility waned. The sense of guilt had been awakened in her by her recognition of a broken Law; but as the sense of sin was as far from her consciousness as ever, she was able to argue that if no one knew she was guilty, no further harm could be done. So why kill what lingering love there might be in Lloyd's heart by insisting that he keep his promise? With that worn face of hers, how could she insist! And suppose she did not? Suppose she gave up that hungry desire to be like other people, arranged to leave Old Chester—on that point she had no uncertainty—but did not make any demand upon him? It was perfectly possible that he would be shamed into keeping his promise. She said to herself that, at any rate, she would wait a week until she had calmed down and could write with moderation and good humor.

Little by little the purpose of diplomacy strengthened, and with it a determination to keep his love—what there was of it—at the price of that "first arrangement." For, after all, the harm was done; Sam Wright was dead. She was his murderer, she reminded herself, sullenly, but nothing like that could ever happen again, so why should she not take what poor happiness she could get?

Of course this acceptance of the situation veered every day in gusts of misery and terror; but, on the whole, the desire for peace prevailed. Yet the week she had allowed herself in which to think it over, lengthened to ten days before she began to write her letter. She sat down at her desk late in the afternoon, but by tea-time she had done nothing more than tear up half a dozen beginnings. After supper David rattled the backgammon-board significantly.

"You are pretty slow, aren't you?" he asked, as she loitered about her desk, instead of settling down to the usual business of the evening.

"Don't you think, just to-night, you would rather read a story?" she pleaded.

"No, ma'am," said David, cheerfully.

So, sighing, she opened the board on her knees. David beat her to a degree that made him very condescending, and also extremely displeased by the interruption of a call from William King.

"Nobody is sick," David said politely; "you needn't have come."

"Somebody is sick further up the hill," William excused himself, smiling.

"Is Mr. Wright worse?" Helena said quickly. She lifted the backgammon- board on to the table, and whispered a word of manners to David, who silently stubbed his copper-toed shoe into the carpet.

"No," the doctor said, "he's better, if anything. He managed to ask Simmons for a poached egg, which made the old fellow cry with joy; and he swore at me quite distinctly because I did not get in to see him this morning. I really couldn't manage it, so I went up after tea, and he was as mad as—as David," said William, slyly. And David, much confused, kicked vigorously.

"Do you think he will ever be able to talk?" she said.

William would not commit himself. "Perhaps; and perhaps not. I didn't get anything clear out of him to-night, except—a bad word."

"Damn?" David asked with interest.

William chuckled and then remembered to look proper. But David feeling that he was being laughed at, hid his face on Helena's shoulder, which made her lift him on to her knee. There, in the drowsy warmth of the little autumn fire, and the quiet flow of grown people's meaningless talk, he began to get sleepy; gradually his head slipped from her shoulder to her breast, and when she gathered his dangling legs into her lap, he fell sound asleep.

"It isn't his bedtime yet," she excused herself. She rested her cheek on the child's head and looked over at the doctor. She wore a dark crimson silk, the bosom filled with sheer white muslin that was caught together under her soft chin by a little pearl pin; her lace undersleeves were pushed back so that William could see the lovely lines of her white wrists. Her parted hair fell in soft, untidy waves down over her ears; she was staring absently across David's head into the fire.

"I wish," William said, "that you would go and call on old Mr. Wright some time. Take David with you. It would cheer him up." It seemed to William King, thinking of the forlorn old man in his big four-poster, that such a vision of maternity and peace would be pleasant to look upon. "He wouldn't use David's bad word to you, I am sure."

"Wouldn't he?" she said.

For once the doctor's mind was nimble, and he said in quick expostulation: "Come, come; you mustn't be morbid. You are thinking about poor Sam and blaming yourself. Why, Mrs. Richie, you are no more responsible for his folly than I am."

She shook her head. "That day at the funeral, I thought how they used to bring the murderer into the presence of the man he had killed."

William King was really displeased. "Now, look here, you must stop this sort of thing! It's not only foolish, but it's dangerous. We can none of us play with our consciences without danger; they cut both ways."

Mrs. Richie was silent. The doctor got up and planted himself on the hearth-rug, his back to the fire, and his hands under his coat tails.

"Let's have it out: How could you help it because that poor boy fell in love? You couldn't help being yourself—could you? And Sam couldn't help being sentimental. Your gentleness and goodness were like something he had never seen before. But you had to stop the sentimentality, of course; that was just your duty. And I know how wisely you did it—and kindly. But the boy was always a self-absorbed dreamer; the mental balance was too delicate; it dipped the wrong way; his mind went. To feel it was your fault is absolute nonsense. Now there! I've never been so out of patience with you before," he ended smiling; "but you deserve it."

"I don't deserve it," she said; "I wish I did."

"When I spoke about goodness," the doctor amended, "I didn't mean to reflect on his father and mother. Mrs. Wright is one of the best women in the world. I only meant—" William sat down and looked into the fire. "Well; just plain goodness isn't necessarily—attractive. A man—at least a boy like Sam, admires goodness, of course; but he does sort of hanker after prettiness;" William's eyes dwelt on her bent head, on the sheer muslin under David's cheek, on the soft incapable hands that always made him think of white apple-blossoms, clasped around the child's yielding body;—"Yes; something pretty, and pleasant, and sweet; that's what a man—I mean a boy, Sam was only a boy; really wants. And his mother, good as she is, is not,—well; I don't know how to express it."

Helena looked over at him with a faint smile. "I thought goodness was the finest thing in the world; I'm sure I used to be told so," she ended dully.

"Of course, you would feel that," the doctor protested; "and it is, of course it is! Only, I can understand how a boy might feel. Down at the Wrights' there was just nothing but plain goodness, oh, very plain, Mrs. Richie. It was all bread-and-butter. Necessary; I'm the last person to say that bread-and-butter isn't necessary. But you do want cake, once in a while; I mean when you are young. Sam couldn't help liking cake," he ended smiling.

"Cakes and ale," Helena said.

But the connection was not clear to William. "At home, there was just plain, ugly goodness; then he met you. And he saw goodness, and other things!"

Helena's fingers opened and closed nervously. "I wish you wouldn't call me good," she said; "I'm not. Truly I'm not."

William laughed, looking at her with delighted eyes. "Oh, no; you are a terrible sinner!"

At which she said with sudden, half-sobbing violence, "Oh, don't; I can't bear it. I am not good."

The doctor sobered. This really was too near the abnormal to be safe; he must bring her out of it. He must make her realize, not only that she was not to blame about Sam Wright, but that the only shadow on her goodness was this same morbid feeling that she was not good. He got up again and stood with his back to the fire, looking down at her with good-natured determination.

"Now look here!" he said, "conscience is a good thing; but conscience, unrestrained by common sense, does a fine work for the devil. That isn't original, Dr. Lavendar said it; but it's true. I wish Dr. Lavendar knew of this morbid idea of yours about responsibility—he'd shake it out of you! Won't you let me tell him?"

"Oh, no! no! Please don't!"

"Well, I won't; but he would tell you that it was wrong not to see straight in this matter; it's unfair to your—to Providence," William said. He did not use religious phrases easily, and he stumbled over "unfair to your Heavenly Father," which was what Dr. Lavendar had said in some such connection as this: "Recognize your privileges and be grateful for the help they have been in making you as good as you are. To deny what goodness you have is not humility, it's only being unfair to your Heavenly Father." But William could not say a thing like that; so he blundered on about Providence, while Helena sat, trembling, her cheek on David's hair.

"You are as good as any mortal of us can be," William declared, "and better than ninety-nine mortals in a hundred. So there! Why Mrs. Richie"—he hesitated, and the color mounted slowly to his face; "your loveliness of character is an inspiration to a plain man like me."

It was intolerable. With a breathless word, she rose, swaying a little under the burden of the sleeping child; then, moving swiftly across the room, she laid him on a sofa. David murmured something as she put him down, but she did not stop to hear it. She came back and stood in front of William King, gripping her hands together in a passion of denial.

"Stop. I can't bear it. I can't sit there with David in my arms and hear you say I am good. It isn't true! I can't bear it—" She stopped short, and turned away from him, trembling very much.

The doctor, alarmed at this outbreak of hysteria, and frowning with concern, put out his kind protesting hands to take hers. But she cringed away from him.

"Don't," she said hoarsely; and then in a whisper: "He is not—my brother."

William, his hand still outstretched, stared at her, his mouth falling slowly open.

"I told you," she said, "that I wasn't—good."

"My God!" said William King. He stepped back sharply, then suddenly sat down, leaning his head on his clenched hand.

Helena, turning slightly, saw him. "I always told you I wasn't," she cried out angrily; "why would you insist on saying I was?"

He did not seem to notice her, though perhaps he shrank a little. That movement, even if she only imagined it, was like the touch of flame. She felt an intolerable dismay. It was more than anger, far more than terror; it seemed to envelop her whole body with a wave of scarlet. It was a new, unbearable, burning anguish. It was shame.

She had an impulse to tear it from her, as if it were some tangible horror, some blazing film, that was covering her flesh. With a cry, she broke out:

"You don't understand! I am not wicked. Do you hear me? I am not wicked. You must listen I"

He made no answer.

"I am not wicked—the way you think. My husband killed my baby. I told you that, long ago. And I could not live with him. I couldn't I Don't you see? Oh, listen, please! Please listen! And Lloyd loved me, and he said I would be happy. And I went away. And we thought Frederick would divorce me, so we could be married. But he didn't. Oh, he didn't on purpose! And we have been waiting for him to die. And he didn't die—he wouldn't die!" she said with a wail. "But now he is dead, and—"

And what? Alas, what? She waited a second, and then went on, with passionate conviction, "And now I am to be married. Yes, you see, I am not as wicked as you think. I am to be married; you won't think me wicked then, will you? Not when I am married? I couldn't have you say those things while I sat and held David. But now I am to be married." In her excitement she came and stood beside him, but he would not look at her. Silence tingled between them. Over on the sofa, David stirred and opened his eyes.

"The child!" William King said; "be careful." He went and lifted David to his feet. "Go up-stairs, my boy." He did not look at Mrs. Richie, who bent down and kissed David, mechanically,

"I dreamed," the little boy mumbled, "'at my rabbits had earrings; an'—"

"Go, dear," she said; and David, drowsily obedient, murmured good- night. A minute later they heard him climbing up-stairs.

Helena turned dumb eyes towards the silent figure on the hearth-rug, but he would not look at her. Under his breath he said one incredulous and tragic word:

"You?"

Then he looked at her.

And at his look she hid her face in her bent arm. That new sensation, that cleansing fire of shame, swept over her again with its intolerable scorch.

"No! No! I am going to be married; I—"

The front door closed behind him. Helena, alone, crouched, sobbing, on the floor.

But the Lord was not in the fire.



CHAPTER XXVII

"Is old Mr. Wright worse?" Martha called downstairs, when the doctor let himself in at midnight.

"No."

"Well, where on earth have you been?" Mrs. King demanded. She was leaning over the banisters in her gray flannel dressing-gown, her candle in its hooded candlestick, throwing a flickering light on her square, anxious face.

William, locking the front door, made no answer. Martha hesitated, and then came down-stairs.

"I must say, William, flatly and frankly, that you—" she paused. "You look tired out, Willy?"

William, fumbling with the guard-chain, was silent.

"Come into the dining-room and I'll get you something to eat," said his wife.

"I don't want anything to eat."

Martha glanced at him keenly. His face was white and haggard, and though he looked at her, he did not seem to see her; when she said again something about food, he made no answer. "Why, William!" she said in a frightened voice. Then with quick common sense, she put her alarm behind her. "Come up-stairs, and go to bed. A good night's sleep will make a new man of you." And in a sort of cheerful silence, she pushed him along in front of her. She asked no more questions, but just as he got into bed she brought him a steaming tumbler of whiskey and water. "I guess you have taken a little cold, my dear," she said.

William looked at her dumbly; then realizing that there was no escape, drank his whiskey, while Martha, her candle in one capable hand, waited to make sure that he drained the last drop. When he gave the glass back to her, she touched his shoulder gently and bade him go to sleep. As she turned away, he caught that capable hand and held it in both of his for a moment.

"Martha," he said, "I beg your pardon."

"Oh, well," said Martha, "of course, a doctor often has to be out late. If you only don't come down with a cold on your lungs, it's all right."

"I sha'n't come down with a cold on my lungs," said William King.

The letter Helena wrote Lloyd Pryor after she had picked herself up, sobbing, from the floor, had no diplomacy about it. Things had happened; she would not go into them now, she said, but things had happened which made her feel that she must accept his offer to carry out their original plan. "When I got your letter, last week, I did hesitate," she wrote, "because I could not help seeing that you did not feel about it as you used to. But I can't hesitate any longer. I must ask you—"

Lloyd Pryor read as far as that, and set his teeth. "Lloyd, my friend," he said aloud, "it appears you have got to pay the piper."

Swearing quietly to himself he tore the letter into many small pieces, and threw them into the fire. "Well," he said grimly, "I have never repudiated yet, but I propose to claim my ninety days,—if I can't squeeze out of it before that!" He sat a long time in his inner office, thinking the thing over: if it had to be, if the piper was inexorable, if he could not squeeze out, how should he safeguard Alice? Of course, a girl of nineteen is bound to resent her father's second marriage; her annoyance and little tempers Lloyd Pryor could put up with, if only she need never know the truth. But how should the truth be covered? They could all three go to Europe for a year. If there was going to be any gossip—and really the chance of gossip was rather remote; very few people had known anything about Frederick Richie or his affairs, and Helena had absolutely no relatives,—but if they went to Europe for a year, any nine days' wonder would have subsided before they got back. As for the offensiveness of presenting Helena to his daughter as a stepmother, Pryor winced, but admitted with a cold impartiality, that she was not intrinsically objectionable. It was only the idea which was unpleasant. In fact, if things were not as they were, she would make an admirable stepmother— "and she is good-looking still," he thought, with an effort to console himself, But, of course, if he could squeeze out of it—And so his answer to Helena's letter was a telegram to say he was coming to Old Chester.

William King, driving down the hill in the October dusk, had a glimpse of him as the stage pulled up at the gate of the Stuffed Animal House, and the doctor's face grew dully red. He had not seen Helena since that black, illuminating night; he had not seen Dr, Lavendar; he had scarcely seen his own wife. He devoted himself to his patients, who, it appeared, lived back among the hills. At any rate, he was away from home from morning until night. William had many things to face in those long drives out into the country, but the mean self- consciousness that he had been fooled was not among them. A larger matter than mortification held him in its solemn grip. On his way home, in the chill October twilights, he usually stopped at Mr. Benjamin Wright's. But he never drew rein at the green gate in the hedge; as he was passing it the night that Pryor arrived, he had to turn aside to let the stage draw up. A man clambered out, and in the dull flash of the stage lanterns, William saw his face.

"Lloyd?" some one said, in a low voice; it was Mrs. Richie, waiting for him inside the gate. William King's face quivered in the darkness.

"That you, Nelly?" Mr. Pryor said;—"no, no; I'll carry my own bag, thank you. Did a hamper come down on the morning stage? Good! We'll have something to eat. I hope you haven't got a sick cook this time. Well, how are you?"

He kissed her, and put his arm around her; then withdrew it, reminding himself not to be a fool. Yet she was alluring! If only she would be sensible, there was no reason why things should not be as pleasant as ever. If she obliged him to pay the piper, Lloyd Pryor was coldly aware that things would never be pleasant again.

"So many dreadful things have happened!" she burst out; but checked herself and asked about his journey; "and—and Alice?"

"Oh, pleasant enough, rather chilly. She's well, thank you." And then they were at the door, and in the bustle of coming in, and taking off his coat, and saying "Hullo, David! Where's your sling?" disagreeable topics were postponed. But in the short twilight before the parlor fire, and at the supper-table, the easy commonplaces of conversation tingled with the consciousness of the inevitable reappearance of those same topics. Once, at the table, he looked at her with a frown.

"What's the matter, Nelly? You look old! Have you been sick?"

"Things have happened," she said with an effort; "I've been worried."

"What things?" he said; but before she could reply, Sarah came in with hot waffles, and the subject was dropped.

"You need more cinnamon with this sugar," Mr. Pryor said with annoyance. And Helena, flushing with anxiety, told the woman to add some cinnamon at once. "Oh, never mind now," he said.—"But you ought to look out for things like that," he added when Sarah had left the room. And Helena said quickly, that she would; she was so sorry!

"Dr. Lavendar," David announced, "he won't let you say you don't like things. He says it ain't polite. But I don't like—"

"Dry up! dry up!" Mr. Pryor said irritably; "Helena, this young man talks too much."

Helena whispered to David to be quiet. She had already arranged with him that he was not to come into the parlor after supper, which was an agreeable surprise to him; "For, you know, I don't like your brother," he said, "nor neither does Danny." Helena was too absorbed to remonstrate; she did, however, remember to tell Mr. Pryor that David had asked if she was coming up to hear him say his prayers.

"I told him I couldn't to-night; and what do you suppose he said? He said, 'Does God like ladies better than gentlemen? I do.'"

It made him laugh, as she had hoped it would. "I fancy that is a reflection upon me," he said. "The young man has never liked me." And when he had clipped off the end of his cigar and struck a match under the mantelpiece, he added, "So you hear him say his prayers? I didn't know you were so religiously inclined."

"I'm not religiously inclined; but, of course, one has to teach a child to say his prayers."

"Oh, I don't object to religion," Mr. Pryor assured her; "in fact, I like it—"

"In other people?" she interrupted gayly.

"Well, yes; in other people. At any rate in your charming sex. Alice is very religious. And I like it very much. In fact, I have a good deal of feeling about it. I wouldn't do anything to—to shock her, you know. I really am perfectly sincere about that, Helena."

He was sincere; he looked at her with an anxiety that for once was quite simple.

"That's why I wrote you as I did about the future. I am greatly embarrassed about Alice."

She caught her breath at the suddenness of his reference, but she knew him well enough not to be much surprised. If a disagreeable topic was to be discussed, the sooner it was taken up and disposed of, the better. That was Lloyd's way.

"Of course," he went on, "if Alice knew of our—ah, acquaintance, it would shock her. It would shock her very much." He paused. "Alice's great charm is her absolute innocence," he added thoughtfully.

That comment was like a blow in the face. Helena caught her breath with the shock of it. But she could not stop to analyze its peculiar terror. "Alice needn't know," she began—but he made an impatient gesture.

"If we married, it would certainly come out."

He was standing with his back to the fire, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his cigar; he blew three smoke rings, and smiled. "Will you let me off, Nelly?"

"I know you don't love me," she broke out passionately—

"Oh, now, Helena, not a scene, please! My dear, I love you as much as ever. You are a charming woman, and I greatly value your friendship. But I can love you just as much, not to say more, if you are here in your own house in Old Chester, instead of being in my house in Philadelphia. Why, it would be like sitting on a volcano!"

"I cannot stay in Old Chester any longer," she said; "dreadful things have happened, and—"

"What things? You said that before. Do explain these mysterious allusions."

"Mr., Wright's son," she began—and then her voice broke. But she told him as well as she could.

Mr. Pryor gave a frowning whistle. "Shocking! Poor Nelly!"

"You see, I must go away," she said, wringing her hands; "I can't bear it!"

"But, my dear," he protested, "it wasn't your fault. You were not to blame because a rash boy—" Then a thought struck him, "but how the devil did he discover—?"

When Helena explained that she supposed old Mr. Wright had told his grandson, Pryor's anger broke out: "He knew? How did he find out?"

Helena shook her head; she had never understood that, she said. Lloyd's anger always confused her, and when he demanded furiously why she had not told him about the old fool—"he'll blazon the whole thing!"—she protested, quivering, that Mr. Wright would not do that.

"I meant to tell you, but I—I forgot it. And anyway, I knew he wouldn't; he said he wouldn't; besides, he had a stroke when he heard about Sam, and he hasn't spoken since. And Dr. King—" she winced— "Dr. King says it's the beginning of the end."

"Thank God!" Lloyd said profoundly relieved. He stood frowning for a minute, then shrugged his shoulders, "Well, of course, that settles it; you can't stay here; there's no question about that. But there's a very pleasant little town, on the other side of Mercer, and—"

"It isn't just the going away," she broke in; "it's being different from people. I never thought about it before; I never really minded. But now, I can't help seeing that if you are—different, I mean just to please yourself, you know, it—it hurts other people, somehow. Oh, I can't explain," she said, incoherently, "and I don't want to trouble you, or talk about right and wrong, and religion, and—that sort of thing—"

"No; please don't," he said, dryly.

"But you promised—you promised!"

"I promised," he said, "and I have a prejudice in favor of keeping my word. Religion, as you call it, has nothing to do with it. I will marry you; I told you so when I wrote to you. But I felt that if I put the matter before you, and told you how difficult the situation was, and appealed to your generosity, for Alice's sake—"

"I appeal to your generosity!—for the sake of other people. It isn't only Alice who would be shocked, if it was found out. Lloyd, I don't insist on living with you. Keep the marriage a secret, if you want to; only, I must, I must be married!" She got up and came and stood beside him, laying her hands on his arm, and lifting her trembling face to his; he frowned, and shrugged her hands away.

"Go and sit down, Nelly. Don't get excited. I told you that I had a prejudice in favor of keeping my word."

She drew back and sat down on the sofa, cowering a little in the corner. "Do you suppose I have no pride?" she breathed. "Do you suppose it is easy for me to—urge?" He saw her fingers tremble as, with elaborate self-control, she pleated the crimson silk of her skirt in little folds across her knee. For a moment they were both silent.

"Secrecy wouldn't do," he said, "To get married, and not tell, is only whipping Satan round the stump as far as Alice is concerned. Ultimately it would make double explanations. The marriage would come out, somehow, and then the very natural question would be: 'Why the devil were they married secretly?' No; you can't keep those things hidden. And as for Alice, if she didn't think anything else, she'd think I had fibbed to her. And that would nearly kill her; she has a perfect mania about truth! You see, it leads up to the same thing: Alice's discovery that I have been—like most men. No; if it's got to be, it shall be open and aboveboard."

She gasped with relief; his look of cold annoyance meant, just for the moment, nothing at all.

I shall tell her that I have met a lady with whom I was in love a long time ago—"

"Was in love? Oh, Lloyd!" she broke in with a cry of pain; at which intrusion of sentimentality Lloyd Pryor said with ferocity: "What's that got to do with it? I'm going to pay the piper! I'll tell Alice that or any other damned thing I please. I'll tell her I'm going to be married in two or three months; I shall go through the form of an engagement. Alice won't like it, of course. No girl likes to have a stepmother; but I shall depend on you, Helena, to make the thing go as well as possible. That's all I have to say."

He set his teeth and turning his back on her, threw his half-smoked cigar into the fire, Helena, cowering on the sofa, murmured something of gratitude, Mr. Pryor did not take the trouble to listen.

"Well," he said, "the next thing is to get you away from this place. We've got to stage the drama carefully, I can tell you."

"I can go at once."

"Well; you had better go to New York;—what will you do with your youngster?" he interrupted himself. "Leave him on Dr. Lavendar's doorstep, I suppose?"

"My youngster?" she repeated. "Do you mean David?"

Mr. Pryor nodded absently, he was not interested in David.

"Why," Helena said breathlessly, "you didn't suppose I was going to leave David?"

At which, in spite of his preoccupation, Pryor laughed outright. "My dear Helena, even you can hardly be so foolish as to suppose that you could take David with you?"

She sat looking at him, blankly, "Not take David! Why, you surely didn't think that I would give up David?"

"My dear," said Lloyd Pryor, "you will either give him up, or you will give me up."

"And you don't care which!" she burst out passionately.

He gave her a deadly look. "I do care which."

And at that she blenched but clung doggedly to his promise. "You must marry me!"

"There is no must about it. I will. I have told you so. But I did not suppose it was necessary to make your giving up David a condition. Not that I mean to turn the young man out, I'm sure. Only, I decline to take him in. But, good Heavens, Helena," he added, in perfectly genuine astonishment, "it isn't possible that you seriously contemplated keeping him? Will you please consider the effect upon the domestic circle of a very natural reference on his part, to your brother? You might as well take your servants along with you—or your Old Chester doctor! Really, my dear Nelly," he ended banteringly, "I should have supposed that even you would have had more sense."

Helena grew slowly very white. She felt as if caught in a trap; and yet the amused surprise in Lloyd Pryor's face was honest enough, and perfectly friendly. "I cannot leave David here," she said faintly. And as terror and despair and dumb determination began to look out of her eyes, the man beside her grew gayly sympathetic.

"I perfectly understand how you feel, He is a nice little chap. But, of course, you see it would be impossible?"

"I can't give him up."

"I wouldn't," he said amiably. "You can go away from Old Chester—of course you must do that—and take him with you. And I will come and see you as often as I can."

He breathed more freely than he had for weeks; more freely than since the receipt of that brief despatch:—"F. is dead," and the initials H. R. So far from having used a sling and a smooth stone from the brook, the boy had been a veritable armor-bearer to the giant! Well; poor Nelly! From her point of view, it was of course a great disappointment. He hated to have her unhappy; he hated to see suffering; he wished they could get through this confounded interview. His sidewise, uneasy glance at her tense figure, betrayed his discomfort at the sight of pain. What a pity she had aged so, and that her hands had grown so thin. But she had her old charm yet; certainly she was still an exquisite creature in some ways—and she had not grown too fat. He had been afraid once that she would get fat. How white her neck was; it was like swan's-down where the lace fell open in the front of her dress. For a moment he forgot his prudent resolutions; he put his arm around her and bent his head to touch her throat with his lips.

But she pushed him away with a flaming look. "David saves you, does he? Well; he will save me!"

Without another word she left him, as she had left him once before, alone in the long parlor with the faintly snapping fire, and the darkness pressing against the uncurtained windows. This time he did not follow her to plead outside her closed door. There was a moment's hesitation, then he shook his head, and took a fresh cigar.

"No," he said, "it's better this way."



CHAPTER XXVIII

"If it was me that was doin' it," said Sarah, "I'd send for the doctor."

"Well, but," Maggie protested, "she might be mad."

"If it was me, I'd let her be mad."

"Well, then, why don't you?" Maggie retorted.

"Send for him?" Sarah said airily impersonal. "Oh, it's none of my business."

"Did you even it to her?" Maggie asked in a worried way.

"I did. I says, 'You're sick, Mrs. Richie,' I says.—She looked like she was dead—'Won't I tell George to run down and ask Dr. King to come up?' I says." "An" what did she say?" Maggie asked absently. She knew what Mrs. Richie had said, because this was the fourth time she and Sarah had gone over it.

"'No,' she says, 'I don't want the doctor. There's nothing the matter.' And she like death! An' I says, 'Will you see Mr. Pryor, ma'am, before he goes?' And she says, 'No,' she says; 'tell Mr. Pryor that I ain't feelin' very well.' An' I closed the shutters again, an' come down-stairs. But if it was me, I'd send for Dr. King. If she ain't well enough to see her own brother—and him just as kind!"— Sarah put her hand into the bosom of her dress for a dollar bill— "Look at that! And you had one, too, though he's hardly ever set eyes on you, If she ain't well enough to see him, she's pretty sick."

"Well," said Maggie, angrily, "I guess I earned my dollar as much as you. Where would his dinner be without me? That's always the way. The cook ain't seen, so she gets left out."

"You ain't got left out this time, anyhow. He's a kind man; I've always said so. And she said she wasn't well enough to see him! Well; if it was me's I'd send for Dr. King."

So the two women wrangled, each fearful of responsibility; until at last, after Maggie had twice gone up-stairs and listened at that silent door, they made up their minds.

"David," Maggie said, "you go and wait at the gate, and when the butcher's cart comes along, you tell him you want on. An' you go down street, an' tell him you want off at Dr. King's. An' you ask Dr. King to come right along up here. Tell him Mrs. Richie's real sick."

"If it was me, I'd let him wait till he goes to school," Sarah began to hesitate; "she'll be mad."

But Maggie had started in and meant to see the matter through: "Let her be mad!"

"Well, it's not my doin'," Sarah said with a fine carelessness, and crept up-stairs to listen again at Mrs. Richie's door. "Seemed like as if she was sort of—cryin'!" she told Maggie in an awed whisper when she came down.

David brought his message to the doctor's belated breakfast table. William had been up nearly all night with a very sick patient, and Martha had been careful not to wake him in the morning. He pushed his plate back, as David repeated Maggie's words, and looked blankly at the table-cloth.

"She's never really got over the shock about Sam Wright's Sam, has she?" Martha said. "Sometimes I almost think she was—" Mrs. King's expressive pantomime of eyebrows and lips meant "in love with him"— words not to be spoken before a child.

"Nonsense!" said William King curtly. "No; I don't want any more breakfast, thank you, my dear. I'll go and hitch up."

Martha followed him to the back door. "William, maybe she's lonely. I'm very tired, but perhaps I'd better go along with you, and cheer her up?" "Oh, no," he called back over his shoulder; "it isn't necessary." Then he added hastily, "but it's very kind in you, Martha, to think of it."

"I'd just as lieves," she insisted flushing with pleasure.

He tried to get his thoughts in order as he and Jinny climbed the hill. He knew what, sooner or later, he must say to Mrs. Richie, and he thought with relief, that if she were really ill, he could not say it that day. But the sight of David had brought his duty home to him. He had thought about it for days, and tried to see some way of escape; but every way was blocked by tradition or religion. Once he had said stumblingly to Dr. Lavendar, that it was wonderful how little harm came to a child from bad surroundings, and held his breath for the reply.

"An innocent child in a bad home," said Dr. Lavendar cheerfully, "always makes me think of a water-lily growing out of the mud."

"Yes!" said the doctor, "the mud doesn't hurt it."

"Not the lily; but unfortunately, Willy, my boy, every child isn't a lily. I wouldn't want to plant one in the mud to see how it would grow, would you?"

And William admitted that he would not.

After that he even put the matter to his wife "Martha, you're a sensible woman, I'd like to ask you about a case." "Oh, well," said Martha simpering, "I don't pretend to any very great wisdom, but I do know something about sickness."

"This isn't sickness; it's about a child. Do you think a child is susceptible to the influence of an older person who is not of the highest character? If, for instance, the mother was—not good, do you suppose a child would be injured?"

"Not good?" said Martha, horrified. "Oh, William' Somebody in Upper Chester, I suppose?"

"But she is a devoted mother; you couldn't be more conscientious yourself. So do you think her conduct could do any harm to a child?"

"Oh, Willy! A child in the care of a bad woman? Shocking!"

"Not bad—not bad—" he said faintly.

"Most shocking! Of course a child would be susceptible to such influences."

William drew arabesques on the table-cloth with his fork, "Well, I don't know—" he began,

"I know!" said Martha, and began to lay down the law. For if Martha prided herself upon anything, besides her common sense, it was the correctness of her views upon the training of children. But she stopped long enough to say, "William, please! the table-cloth." And William put his fork down.

He thought of his wife's words very often in the next few days. He thought of them when David stood rattling the knob of the dining-room door, and saying "Maggie says please come and see Mrs. Richie." He thought of them as Jinny pulled him slowly up the hill.

Sarah was lying in wait for him at the green gate. Maggie had sent for him, she said; and having put the responsibility where it belonged, she gave him what information she could. Mrs. Richie wasn't well enough to see her brother before he went away on the stage; she wouldn't eat any breakfast, and she looked like she was dead. And when she (Sarah) had given her a note from Mr. Pryor, she read it and right afterwards kind of fainted away like. An' when she come to, she (Sarah) had said, "Don't you want the doctor?" An' Mrs. Richie said "No." "But Maggie was scared, Dr. King; and she just sent David for you."

"Quite right," said William King, "Let Mrs. Richie know I am here."

He followed the woman to Helena's door, and heard the smothered dissenting murmur within; but before Sarah, evidently cowed, could give him Mrs. Richie's message that she was much obliged, but did not wish—William entered the room. She was lying with her face hidden in her pillows; one soft braid fell across her shoulder, then sagged down and lay along the sheet, crumpled and wrinkled with a restless night. That braid, with its tendrils of little loose locks, was a curious appeal. She did not turn as he sat down beside her, and he had to lean over to touch her wrist with his quiet fingers.

"I did not send for you," she said in a muffled voice; "there is nothing the matter."

"You haven't had any breakfast," said William King. "Sarah, bring Mrs. Richie some coffee."

"I don't want—"

"You must have something to eat."

Helena drew a long, quivering breath; "I wish you would go away. There is nothing the matter with me."

"I can't go until you feel better, Mrs. Richie."

She was silent. Then she turned a little, gathering up the two long braids so that they fell on each side of her neck and down across her breast; their soft darkness made the pallor of her face more marked. She was so evidently exhausted that when Sarah brought the coffee, the doctor slipped his hand under her shoulders and lifted her while she drank it.

"Don't try to talk; I want you to sleep."

"Sleep! I can't sleep."

"You will," he assured her.

She lay back on her pillows, and for the first time she looked at him. "Dr. King, he has quarrelled with me."

William flinched, as though some wound had been touched; then he said, "Don't talk of it now."

She turned her face sharply away from him, burying it in her pillow.

"Mrs. Richie, you must try to eat something. See, Maggie has sent you some very nice toast."

"I won't eat. I wish you would go."

There was silence for a moment. Then, suddenly, she cried out, "Well? What are you going to do, all of you? What did Dr. Lavendar say?"

"Dr. Lavendar doesn't know anything about it."

"I don't know why I told you! I was out of my head, I think. And now you despise me."

"I don't despise you."

She laughed. "Of course you do."

"Mrs. Richie, I'm too weak myself to despise anybody."

"I wish you would go away," she repeated.

"I will; but you must have a sedative first."

"David's bromide?" she said sarcastically, "A broken finger, or a broken—well, anything. Dr. King—you won't tell Dr. Lavendar?"

"Tell? What kind of a man do you suppose I am! I wish you would tell him yourself, though."

"Tell him myself?" she gave him another swift look that faltered as her eyes met his. "You are crazy! He would take David away."

"Mrs. Richie," said William miserably, "you know you can't keep David."

"Not keep David!"

She sat up in bed, supported on each side by her shaking hands; she was like a wild creature at bay, she looked him full in the face. "Do you think I would give him up, just to please you, or Dr. Lavendar, when I quarrelled with Lloyd, to keep him? Lloyd wouldn't agree that I should have him. Yes; if it hadn't been for David, you wouldn't have the right to despise me! Why, he's all I've got in the world."

William King was silent.

"You think I am wicked! But what harm could I possibly do him?" Her supporting arms shook so that the doctor laid a gentle hand on her shoulder,

"Lie down," he said, and she fell back among her pillows.

"Who could do more for him than I can? Who could love him so much? He has everything!" she said faintly.

"Please take this medicine," William interposed, and his calm, impersonal voice was like a blow, "Oh, you despise me! But if you knew—"

"I don't despise you," he said again. And added, "I almost wish I did."

But this she did not hear. She was saying desperately, "I will never give David up. I wish I hadn't told you; but I will never give him up!"

"I am going now," the doctor said. "But sometime I am afraid I must tell you how I feel about David. But I'll go now. I want you to try to sleep."

When he had gone, she took from under her pillow that letter which had made her "faint like." It was brief, but conclusive:

"The matter of the future has seemed to settle itself—I think wisely; and I most earnestly hope, happily, for you. The other proposition would have meant certain unhappiness all round. Keep your boy; I am sure you will find him a comfort. I am afraid you are a little too excited to want to see me again immediately. But as soon as you decide where you will go, let me know, and let me be of any service in finding a house, etc. Then, when you are settled and feel equal to a visit, I'll appear. I should certainly be very sorry to let any little difference of opinion about this boy interfere with our friendship. L.P."

Sitting up in bed, she wrote in lead-pencil, two lines;

"I will never see you again. I never want to hear your name again."

She did not even sign her name.



CHAPTER XXIX

To have David go away for the long-anticipated trip with Dr. Lavendar, was a relief to Helena struggling up from a week of profound prostration. Most of the time she had been in bed, only getting up to sit with David at breakfast and supper, to take what comfort she might in the little boy's joyous but friendly unconcern. He was full of importance in the prospect of his journey; there was to be one night on a railroad-car, which in itself was a serious experience; another in an hotel; hotel! David glowed at the word. In Philadelphia they were to see the sights in the morning; in the afternoon, to be sure, Dr. Lavendar had warned him that it would be necessary to sit still while some one talked. However, it is never necessary to listen. After the talking, they would go and see the ships at the wharves, and Liberty Bell. Then—David's heart sank; bed loomed before him, But it would be an hotel bed;—there was some comfort in that! Besides, it is never necessary to sleep. The next day going home on the cars they would see the Horseshoe Curve; the very words made his throat swell with excitement.

"Did the locomotive engine ever drop off of it?" he asked Helena.

"No, dear," she said languidly, but with a smile. She always had a smile for David.

After the Horseshoe Curve there would be a night at Mercer. Mercer, of course, was less exciting than Philadelphia; still, it was "travelling," and could be boasted of at recess. But as David thought of Mercer, he had a bleak revelation. For weeks his mind had been on this journey; beyond it, his thought did not go. Now, there rushed upon him the staggering knowledge that after the night in Mercer, life would still go on! Yes, he would be at home; in Miss Rose Knight's school-room; at supper with Mrs. Richie. It is a heavy moment, this first consciousness that nothing lasts. It made David feel sick; he put his spoon down and looked at Mrs. Richie. "I shall be back," he said blankly.

And at that her eyes filled. "Yes, darling! Won't that be nice!"

And yet his absence for the next few days would be a relief to her. She could think the whole thing out, she said to herself. She had not been well enough to think clearly since Lloyd had gone. To adjust her mind to the bitter finality meant swift oscillations of hate and the habit of affection—the spirit warring with the flesh. She would never see him again;—she would send for him! she despised him;—what should she do without him? Yet she never wavered about David. She had made her choice. William King's visit had not shaken her decision for an instant; it had only frightened her horribly. How should she defend herself? She meant to think it all out, undisturbed by the sweet interruptions of David's presence. And yet she knew she should miss him every minute of his absence. Miss him? If Dr. King had known what even three days without David would mean to her, he would not have wasted his breath in suggesting that she should give him up! Yet the possibility of such a thing had the allurement of terror; she played with the thought, as a child, wincing, presses a thorn into its flesh to see how long it can bear the smart. Suppose, instead of this three days' trip with Dr. Lavendar, David was going away to stay? The mere question made her catch him in her arms as if to assure herself he was hers.

The day before he started, Helena was full of maternal preoccupations. The travelling-bag that she had begun to pack for herself—for so different a journey!—had to be emptied of its feminine possessions, and David's little belongings stowed in their place. David himself had views about this packing; he kept bringing one thing or another—his rubber boots, a cocoon, a large lump of slag honeycombed with air- holes; would she please put them into the bag?

"Why, but darling, you will be back again on Saturday," she consoled him, as each treasure was rejected.—("Suppose he was not coming back! How should I feel?")

He was to spend the night before the journey at the Rectory, and after supper Helena went down the hill with him. "I wish I hadn't consented to it," she said to herself; "do you like to go and leave me, David?" she pleaded.

And David jumping along at her side, said joyously, "Yes, ma'am."

At the Rectory he pushed the door open and bounded in ahead of her, "I'm here!"

Dr. Lavendar put down his Spirit of Missions, and looked over his spectacles. "You don't say so! And you're here, too, Mrs. Richie? Come in!"

Helena, hesitating in the hall, said she had only come to leave David. But Dr. Lavendar would not listen to that.

"Sit down! Sit down!" he commanded genially.

David, entirely at home, squatted at once upon the rug beside Danny. "Dr. Lavendar," she said, "you'll bring him back to me on Saturday?"

"Unless I steal him for myself," said Dr. Lavendar, twinkling at David, who twinkled back, cozily understanding.

Helena stooped over him and kissed him; then took one of his reluctant hands from its clasp about his knees and held it, patting it, and once furtively kissing it, "Good-by, David. Saturday you'll be at home again."

The child's face fell. His sigh was not personal; it only meant the temporariness of all human happiness. Staring into the fire in sudden melancholy, he said, "'By." But the next minute he sparkled into excited joy, and jumped up to hang about her neck and whisper that in Philadelphia he was going to buy a false-face for a present for Dr. Lavendar; "or else a jew's-harp. He'll give it to me afterwards; and I think I want a jew's-harp the most," he explained.

"David," Helena said in a whisper, putting her cheek down against his, "Oh, David, won't you please, give me—'forty kisses'? I'm so— lonely."

David drew back and looked hard into her face that quivered in spite of the smile she had summoned to meet his eyes. It was a long look, for a child; then suddenly, he put both arms around her neck in a breathless squeeze. "One—two—three—four—" he began.

William King, coming in for his evening smoke, saw that quick embrace; his face moved with pain, and he stepped back into the hall with some word of excuse about his coat. When he returned, she was standing up, hurrying to get away. "Saturday," she repeated to Dr. Lavendar; "Saturday, surely?"

"Why," the old man said smiling, "you make me feel like a thief. Yes; you shall have him Saturday night. Willy, my boy, do you think Mrs. Richie ought to go up the hill alone?"

"Oh, it will be bright moonlight in a few minutes," she protested nervously, not looking at the doctor.

"I will walk home with Mrs. Richie," William said.

"No! oh, no; please don't!" The dismay in her voice was unmistakable.

Dr. Lavendar thrust out a perplexed lower lip. "If she'd rather just go by herself, Willy, there are no highwaymen in Old Chester, and—"

But William King interrupted him gently. "I wish to speak to Mrs. Richie." And Dr. Lavendar held his tongue.

"I am sorry to bother you," William said, as he held the gate open for her; "but I felt I must speak to you."

Helena made no reply. All the way down the street, almost to the foot of the hill, Old Chester's evening stillness was unbroken, except for the rustle of fallen leaves under their feet. Suddenly the great disk of the hunter's moon lifted slowly up behind the hills, and the night splintered like a dark crystal; sheets of light spread sharply in the open road, gulfs of shadow deepened under trees and beside walls. It was as abrupt as sound. William King broke into hurried words as though he had been challenged: "I knew you didn't want me to walk home with you, but indeed you ought not to go up the hill alone. Please take my arm; the flagging is so uneven here."

"No, thank you."

"Mrs. Richie, please don't feel that I am not your friend, just because—Indeed, I think I am more your friend than I ever was. You will believe that, won't you?"

"Oh, I suppose so; that is the way saints always talk to sinners."

"I am far enough from being a saint," William King said with an awkward effort to laugh; "but—"

"But I am a sinner?" she interrupted.

"Oh, Mrs. Richie, don't let us talk this way! I have nothing but pity, and—and friendship. The last thing I mean to do, is to set myself as a judge of your actions; God knows I have no right to judge anybody! But this matter of David, that's what I wanted to speak to you about. My responsibility," he stopped, and drew in his breath. "Don't you see, my responsibility—"

Helena did not speak; she was marshalling all her forces to fight for her child. How should she begin? But he did not wait for her to begin.

"I would rather lose my right hand than pain you. I've gone all over it, a hundred times. I've tried to see some way out. But I can't. The only way is for you to give him up. It isn't right for you to have him! Mrs. Richie, I say this, and it is hard and cruel, and yet I never felt more"—William King stopped short—"friendly," he ended brokenly.

He was walking at a pace she found hard to follow. "I can't go quite so fast," she said faintly, and instantly he came to a dead stop.

"Dr. King, I want to explain to you—"

She lifted her face, all white and quivering in the moonlight, but instead of explanations, she broke out: "Oh, if you take him away from me, I shall die! I don't care very much about living anyhow. But I can't live without David. Please, Dr. King; oh, please; I will be good! I will be good," she repeated like a child, and stood there crying, and clinging to his arm. All her reasons and excuses and pleadings had dropped out of her mind. "Don't take him away from me; I will be good!" she said.

William King, with those trembling hands on his arm, looked down at her and trembled too. Then roughly, he pushed her hands away. "Come on. We mustn't stand here. Don't you suppose I feel this as much as you do? I love children, and I know what it means to you to let David go. But more than that, I—have a regard for you, and it pains me inexpressibly to do anything that pains you. You can't understand how terrible this is to me, and I can't tell you. I mustn't tell you. But never mind, it's true. It isn't right, no, it isn't right! that a woman who—you know what I mean. And even if, after all, you should marry him, what sort of a man is he to have charge of a little boy like David? He has deceived us, and lied to us; he is a loose liver, a—"

"Wait," she panted; "I am not going to marry him. I thought you understood that."

He drew away from her with a horrified gesture. "And you would keep an innocent child—"

"No! No! I've broken with him—on account of David!"

"Broken with him!" said William King; he caught her by the wrist, and stared at her. Then with a breathless word that she could not hear, he dropped her hand and turned his face away.

Again, in their preoccupation, they stood still; this time in a great bank of shadow by the wall of the graveyard half-way up the hill.

"So you won't take him from me?" she said; "I will leave Old Chester. You need never see me again."

"Good God!" said William King, "do you think that is what I want?"

She tried to see his face, but he had turned his back on her so that she stood behind him. Her hands were clasping and unclasping and her voice fluttering in her throat. "You won't take him?"

"Mrs. Richie," he said harshly, "do you love that man still?"

But before she could answer, he put the question aside. "No! Don't tell me. I've no right to ask. I—don't want to know. I've no right to know. It's—it's nothing to me, of course." He moved as he spoke out into the moonlight, and began to climb the pebbly road; she was a step or two behind him. When he spoke again his voice was indifferent to the point of contempt. "This side is smoother; come over here. I am glad you are not going to marry Mr. Pryor. He is not fit for you to marry."

"Not fit for—me!" she breathed.

"And I am glad you have broken with him. But that has no bearing upon your keeping David. A child is the most precious thing in the world; he must be trained, and—and all that. Whether you marry this man or not makes no difference about David. If you have lived—as you have lived—you ought not to have him. But I started the whole thing. I made Dr. Lavendar give him to you. He didn't want to, somehow; I don't know why. So don't you see? I can't leave him in your care. Surely you see that? I am responsible. Responsible not only to David, but to Dr. Lavendar."

"If Dr. Lavendar is willing to let me have him, I don't see why you need to feel so about it. What harm could I do him? Oh, how cruel you are—how cruel you are!"

"Would Dr. Lavendar let you have him, if—he knew?"

"But that's over; that's finished," she insisted. "oh, I tell you, it's over!"

The doctor's silence was like a whip.

"Oh, I know; you think that he was here last week. But there has to be a beginning of everything—that was the beginning. I told him I would not give David up to marry him; and we quarrelled. And—it's over."

"I can't go into that," the doctor said. "That's not my business. David is my business. Mrs. Richie, I want you quietly, without any explanation, to give the boy back to Dr, Lavendar. If you don't, I shall have no choice. I shall have to tell him."

"But you said you wouldn't tell him! Oh, you break your word—"

"I won't tell him your affairs," said William King. "I will never do that. But I'll tell him my own—some of them. I'll say I made a mistake when I advised him to let you have David, and that I don't think you ought to be trusted to bring up a little boy. But I won't say why."

"Dr. King, if I tell him just what you've said; that you think you made a mistake, and you think I am not to be trusted;—if I tell him myself, and he consents to let me keep him, will you interfere?"

William reflected heavily. "He won't consent," he said; "he'll know I wouldn't say a thing like that without reason. But if he does, I shall be silent."

There was a despairing finality in his words. They were at her own gate now; she leaned her head down on it, and he heard a pitiful sound. William King's lips were dry, and when he spoke the effort made his throat ache. What he said was only the repetition of his duty as he saw it. "I'd rather lose my right hand than make you suffer. But I've no choice. I've no choice!" And when she did not answer, he added his ultimatum. "I'll have to tell Dr. Lavendar on Sunday, unless you will just let me settle it all for you by saying that you don't want David any long—"

"Not want David!"

"I mean, that you've decided you won't keep him any longer. I'll find a good home for him, Mrs. Richie," he ended in a shaking voice.

She gave him one look of terror; then opened the gate and shut it quickly in his face, drawing the bolt with trembling fingers. As she flew up the path, he saw her for an instant as she crossed a patch of moonlight; then the darkness hid her.



CHAPTER XXX

It was incredible to David as he thought it over afterwards, but he actually slept away that wonderful night on the railroad! When he climbed on to the shutting-up shelf behind red and green striped curtains, nothing had been further from his mind than sleep. It was his intention to sit bolt upright and watch the lamps swinging in the aisle, to crane his neck over the top of the curtains and look out of the small hinged window at the smoke all thick with sparks from the locomotive engine, and at the mountains with the stars hanging over them, and—at the Horseshoe Curve! But instead of seeing all these wonders that he and Dr. Lavendar had talked about for the last few weeks, no sooner had he been lifted into his berth than, in a flash, the darkness changed to bright daylight. Yes; the dull, common, every- night affair of sleep, had interfered with all his plans. He did not speak of his disappointment the next morning, as he dressed—somehow— in the jostling, swaying little enclosure where the washstands were; but he thought about it, resentfully. Sleep! "When I'm a man, I'll never sleep," he assured himself; then cheered up as he realized that absence from Sarah had brought at least one opportunity of manhood—he would not have to wash behind his ears! But he brooded over his helplessness to make up for that other loss. He was so silent at breakfast in the station that Dr. Lavendar thought he did not like his food.

"You can have something else, David. What do you want?"

"Ice-cream," David said, instantly alert.

"At breakfast!" David nodded, and the ice-cream appeared. He ate it in silence, and when he had scraped the saucer, he said,

"Can you ever get back behind, sir?"

"Behind what?" Dr. Lavendar asked. He was looking at David and wondering what was different about the child; he did not have quite his usual aspect. "I must have left off some of his clothes," Dr. Lavendar thought anxiously, and that question about getting back behind suggested buttons. "Are your braces fastened?" he asked.

"And do it over again," David said. "Is there any way you can get back behind, and do it over again?"

"Do what over again?" Dr. Lavendar said. "If they've come unfastened— "

"I don't like sleeping," said David. "If I could get behind again, I wouldn't."

Dr. Lavendar gave it up, but he fumbled under David's little coat and discovered that the buttons were all right. "There seems to be something different about you, David," he said, as they pushed their chairs from the table. David had no explanation to offer, so Dr. Lavendar consulted the waitress: "Is there anything wrong about this little boy's clothing? He doesn't look just right—"

"I guess he hasn't had his hair brushed, sir," said the smiling young woman, and carried the child off to some lair of her own, whence he emerged in his usual order.

"Thank you, my dear," said Dr. Lavendar. He took David's hand, and out they stepped into the world! For a moment they stood still on the sidewalk to get their breaths in the rush and jostle of the crowd that surged along the street; a simple, happy pair—an old man in a blue muffler and broad-brimmed felt hat, a child in a little surtout and visored cap. David gripped Dr. Lavendar's hand tight, and looked up into his face; its smile beaming upon all these hurrying people, reassured the child, and he paced along beside the old gentleman in grave content. They stopped at the first shop-window, and gazed at a row of fish bedded in ice—beautiful iridescent mackerel, fat red pompoms, and in the middle, in a nest of seaweed, green-black creatures, with great claws that ended in pincers and eyes that looked like pegs stuck into their heads. David stared, open-mouthed; then he put a hand into his pocket.

"How much would one cost, sir?"

"I don't know," said Dr. Lavendar.

"I think I will buy one, and take it home and keep it in a cage."

At which Dr. Lavendar said gravely, that he feared the creatures would not be happy in a cage—"And besides, people eat them, David."

David was silent; then, in a suppressed voice, he said, "Are they happy when people eat them? I think they'd rather be in a cage; I would hang it in my window."

But Dr. Lavendar only said, "Dear me! What have we here?" and drew him to the next shop, at the door of which stood a wooden Indian, a tomahawk in one hand, and a cigar-box in the other. Dr. Lavendar bade David wait outside while he went into this shop, which the little boy was perfectly willing to do, for it isn't every day you get the chance to examine a wooden Indian, even to climbing up on his pedestal and feeling his tomahawk with respectful fingers. When Dr. Lavendar came out, David took his kind old hand, and burst into confidences.

"When I'm big I'm going to fight Indians. Or else I'll drive fast horses. I don't know which. It's hard to decide, ain't it, sir?"

"Very hard. If you choose the horses, I'll give you Goliath."

David was silent; then he sighed: "I guess I'll fight Indians, sir," he said.

But a moment later he was cheerfully confidential; he had thirty cents to spend! "Dear, dear," said Dr. Lavendar, "we mustn't do anything rash. Here, let's look in this window."

Oh, how many windows there were, and all of them full of beautiful things! Dr. Lavendar was willing to stop at every one; and he joined in David's game of "mine," with the seriousness that all thoughtful persons give to this diversion.