"There is a difference. But somehow the career of a nurse is so—well—difficult, and—hard," Mrs. Thomas went on. "I wonder how you can approach it with your enthusiasm undaunted after months of service."

"I do not know, but it seems my road to what is mine. It gets me so near people—when they most need me—are so glad to have me! There seems to be nothing between me—and them. I love it, oh! I love it, Mrs. Thomas!"

"See here, Miss Glynn, where are you going this afternoon?"

"I do not know; just—going."

"I wish—dear me! I do wish you could go somewhere; do something shockingly frivolous."

"No, I couldn't to-day. I feel like praying—or dancing. There's the most wonderful, singing feeling inside of me. That's why I do not need—fun as much as most of the girls do. You are very kind; I think I will go to your big, fine park and walk and walk. I'd like to see the sun set and the stars——"

"Now, Miss Glynn, unless you promise me to get under shelter before the stars come out I'll call the police. Some day you will learn that New York is not your Canadian hamlet."

Priscilla laughed gayly.

"Very well. I will take my walk and then go to my dear old friend. He'll be looking for me from his high window. He always stands there late afternoons, on the chance of my coming. He says it's a pleasure to feel you have something that may come, even if you know it isn't coming just then."

Priscilla changed her clothing and set forth a half hour later for her walk and to meet with an adventure that changed the current of her thought materially. From that afternoon she was pressed and forced up her Road by a power that had taken her into control with definite purpose.

She went into the park at the lower entrance and walked rapidly to a high place that was a favourite with her. So peaceful and detached it was that she could generally think her thoughts, sing aloud a little song, and feel safe from intrusion. Being high and open, the sunlight rested longer there than it did below and misled one as to time.

There was a glorious sunset that evening, a golden, deep one, against which the bare trees, towers, and house roofs stood outlined black and sharp. It was like a burnished shield. It was a still day, with a gentle crispness in the air that stimulated while it did not chill.

"Everything is waiting. What for? what for?" Priscilla whispered sociably to herself. She was young, full of health and success. Of course she was waiting as the young do. And then something touched her cheek softly, and, looking down, she saw that her dark suit was covered with feathery snowflakes. So silently had they escaped a passing cloud that she was startled. She arose at once and was surprised to find, in the hollow below, that the paths were crusted and the electric lights gleamed yellow through a fluttering mist of flying snow. It was very beautiful, but it warned one to hasten, and besides it had grown quite dark.

There was a path, Priscilla knew it well, that led straight across the park to an entrance near Boswell's home, and she took it now at a rapid pace.

The beauty of the walk did not escape her, the exhilaration of the air acted like a cordial upon her, she seemed hardly to touch the ground as she ran on; and once she paused before setting her foot upon the lovely whiteness. As she hesitated some one stepped from the shadow of a clump of bushes and confronted her under the electric light.

"Can you tell me how to find the nearest way out? I'm lost."

Priscilla's heart gave one hard throb and stood still, it seemed for an hour, while an almost forgotten terror seized and held her. She was looking full upon Jerry-Jo McAlpin! A soiled and haggard shadow he was of what he once had been, but it was Jerry-Jo and no other.

"I—I did not mean to frighten you. Forgive me. I ain't going to hurt you, Miss. I——"

But Priscilla was gone before the sentence was finished. Gone before she knew whether the speaker had recognized her or not. Gone before—and then she stood still. She could not leave him to wander alone at night in that big, strange place. No matter what happened, she must treat him humanly, she, who knew the danger. She went back, her blood running like ice through her body; but Jerry-Jo McAlpin was not there. Priscilla waited, and once she spoke vague directions to the empty space, but no answering voice replied. Presently she controlled herself, and took to the path again, and reached John Boswell's house before he had left his window.

She did not tell of the encounter; she felt she must wait, but in her heart she knew that Jerry-Jo McAlpin was as surely on her trail as she was herself. Such things as that meeting did not happen to them of the In-Place unless for a purpose.

She had a wonderful evening with Boswell. They did not go out, and after dinner he read her some manuscript stories. Boswell had never before so intimately permitted her to come close to his work. She had seen stories of his in print, had heard plans for others, but before the fire in his study that night he read, among other things, "The Butterfly and the Beetle." So beautifully, so touchingly, had he pictured the little romance, of which Priscilla herself was part, that the tears fell from the girl's eyes while her lips were smiling at the tender humour. The undercurrent of meaning threw new light on the lonely life of the rich, but wretched man. The joy depicted in simple, friendly intercourse, the aspiration of the Beetle, the grateful appreciation for the plain, common happenings that in most lives were taken for granted, but which in his rose to monumental importance, endeared him to her anew. It brought back to her what Boswell had told her of his relations with Farwell Maxwell, her Anton Farwell. She could now, with her broader, more mature reason, understand the devotion the cripple had given the one man who, in the empty years, had taken him without reservation, had ignored his limitations, and had been his friend and comrade.

Suddenly she asked:

"Have you heard from—from Master Farwell lately?" The question startled Boswell.

"Yes. I had a letter yesterday. He has been ill. That squaw woman, Long Jean, took care of him. The letter sounded restless. There'll be trouble with Farwell before we get through. My letters are evidently lacking power, and your silence baffles him."

"Poor Master Farwell!"

"I fancy he thought Joan Moss would go to him. It has been hard work to build a barrier between him and her that could satisfy, now that he believes you have told her of his being among the living."

"What have you said to him all this time?"

Boswell shifted his position, and Priscilla saw the haggard, careworn look spread over his face. By sudden insight she realized that he looked old, pitiful, and far from well, and her heart filled with sympathy. The half-mystical life was telling upon him, becoming a burden.

"Oh, at first I said the surprise of knowing he lived had made her, made Joan Moss, ill. It took nearly six months to cover that, and I did some good writing during that period. Then I told him there were things to settle; then, fear for his safety overpowered her: dread of being tracked. And since then—well, since then there has been silence. Can you not understand? His pride has asserted itself at last. If she will not communicate with him herself, he will have none of me; none of you. Has he ever said a word about her to—you?"

"Never," Priscilla answered.

"But," Boswell went on, "I notice a change in him; an almost feverish impatience. I fear he doubts me—after all these years!"

"And when he knows?"

The man by the fire shrank deeper in his chair.

"When he knows?" he repeated. "Why, then he will have an opportunity to understand my life-long devotion, my gratitude, my love! That is all."



CHAPTER XVI

"For real emergencies," Doctor Ledyard once remarked to Helen Travers, "give me the nervous, high-strung women. They come through shock and danger better, they hold to a climax more steadily. Your phlegmatic woman goes to pieces because she hasn't imagination and vision enough to carry her over the present."

This reasoning caused him to select Priscilla Glenn for one of the most critical operations he had ever performed. Among the blue and white nurses of his knowledge this girl with the strange, uplifted expression of face; this girl who was actually on the lookout for experience and practice, and who seriously loved her profession, stood in a class by herself. He had long had his eye upon her, had meant to single her out. And now the opportunity had come.

Perhaps the most important man in business circles, certainly one of the richest men in the city, had come to that period of his life's career when he must pay toll for the things he had done and left undone in his past. The broad, common gateway gaped wide for him, and only one chance presented itself as a possible means of holding him back from the long journey he so shudderingly contemplated.

"One chance in ten?" he questioned.

"One—in——" Ledyard had hesitated.

"A hundred?"

"A thousand."

A breathless pause followed. Then:

"And if I do not take it, how long?"

"A week, a month; not longer."

"I'll take it."

"I'll have my partner——Would you care for any one else?" Ledyard asked.

"No. Since it must be, I put myself in your hands. I trust you above any one I know. Do your best for me, and in case I slip through your fingers I thank you now, and—good-bye."

Before any great event, or operation, Ledyard was supersensitive, highly wrought, and nervous. When he heard the announcement that day of the operation: "All is ready, sir!" he stepped, gowned and masked, into the operating-room, and was aware of a senseless inclination to ask some one—he did not know whom—to make less noise and to lower the shades. Then his eye fell, not on the dignified and serene head nurse, not on the other ghostly young forms in their places near the table, not on the anesthetist, nor young Travers, his partner, but on the nurse who stood a little apart, the girl he had selected in order to test her on a really great case. So radiant and inspired was Priscilla Glenn's face that it fairly shone in that grim place and positively had the effect of bringing Ledyard to the calmness that characterized his action once the necessity demanded.

"How is your patient, Doctor Sloan?" he asked the anesthetist.

"Fine, Doctor Ledyard. I'm ready when you are."

Then tense silence followed, broken only by the click of instruments and the curt, crisp commands. The minutes, weighted with concentration, ran into the hour. Not a body in that room was aware of fatigue or anxiety. A life was at stake, and every one knew it. It did not matter that the man upon the table was important and useful: had he been the meanest of the mean and in the same critical state, that steady hand, which guided the knife so scientifically and powerfully, would have worked the same.

The sun beat down upon the glass roof of that high room; the perspiration started to Ledyard's forehead and a nurse wiped it away.

From her place Priscilla Glenn watched breathlessly the scene before her. It seemed to her that she had never seen an operation before; had never comprehended what one could be. She realized the odds against which those two great men were battling, and her gaze rested finally, not on the head surgeon, but on his partner. Once, as if by some subtle attraction, he raised his eyes and met hers. Above the mask his glance showed kindly and encouragingly. He knew that some nurses lost their nerve when a thing stretched on as this did; he never could quite overlook the fact that nurses were women, as well, and he hated to see one go under. But this young nurse was showing no weakness. Travers saw that, after a moment, and dropped his eyes. But that glance had fixed Priscilla's face in his memory, and when, after the great man had been carried to his room with hope following him, when he could be left with safety to his private nurse, Travers came upon the girl standing by a deep window in the upper hall. He remembered her at once and stopped to say a pleasant word.

This was not the strictly proper thing to do, and Travers knew it. Ledyard was always challenging his undignified tendencies.

"Unless doctors and nurses can leave their sex outside their profession," was a pet epigram of Ledyard's, "they had better choose another."

But Travers had never been able to fulfil his partner's ideal.

"It was a wonderful operation," he said. "I hope it did not overtire you. You will get hardened after a while."

"I am not at all tired. Yes, it was—wonderful! I did not know any operation could be like that—I mean in the way that it was done. I have always been afraid of Doctor Ledyard before; all of us are; I shall never be again."

"May I ask why?"

Travers, being young and vital, was forgetting, for the moment, his professional air to a dangerous extent. He was noticing the strange coloured hair under the snowy cap, the poise of the head, the deep violet eyes in the richly tinted face.

"It was that—well, the look on his face after he had done all that he could—done it so wonderfully. That look was—a prayer! I shall never forget."

Travers gave a light laugh.

"It would be like Doctor Ledyard," he said with a peculiarly boyish ring in his voice, "to do his part first and pray afterward."

"But no one could ever be afraid of him again having once seen that look!"

"Miss Glynn," Travers replied; "they could! and yet the look holds the fear in check."

Priscilla went early to bed that night. She had planned a visit to Boswell when her enthusiasm was at its height, but at the day's end she found herself so exhausted that she sought her room in a state bordering on collapse.

Sounds outside caught and held her attention; every sense was quiveringly alert and receptive; she was at the mercy of her subconscious self.

"Extry! extry!" bellowed a boy just below her window; "turribul accident on—de—extry! extry! Latest bulletin—Gordan Moffatt—big fin—cier—extry! extry!"

Priscilla sat up in bed and listened. So intimate had the insistent boy in the street become that she was drawn to him by a common bond of sympathy.

Slowly a luxurious sense of weariness overcame her and again she leaned back on her pillow and sank into a semiconscious sleep. Balanced between life and the oblivion, into which reason enters blindfolded, she made no resistance, but was swayed by every passing wave of thought, memory, and vision.

The voice outside merged presently into Jerry-Jo McAlpin's. So naturally did it do so that the girl upon the bed, rigid and pale, accepted the change with no surprise.

Jerry-Jo was asking her the way out! He was lost—lost. He wanted to get out of the darkness and the noise; he wanted to find his way back to the In-Place.

Yes, she would show him! There was no fear of him; no repulsion. She was very safe and strong, and she knew that it was wiser for Jerry-Jo to go back home.

Then suddenly she and he were transported from the bewildering city, talking in its sleep, to the sweet, fresh dimness of the Kenmore Green, where the steamer had left them. It was early, very early morning, not more than four o'clock, and the stars were bright and the hemlocks black, and the red rocks looked soft in the shadows, like pillows. And over the Green, loping and inquisitive, came Sandy McAdam's dog, Bounder. How natural and restful the scene was! Then it was Jerry-Jo, not Priscilla, who was leading. The half-breed with a gesture of friendliness was beckoning her on toward the mossy wood path leading to Lonely Farm. There was a definiteness about the slouching figure that forbade any pause at the White Fish Lodge or the master's dark and silent house. Priscilla longed to stop, but she hastened on, feeling a need for hurry.

Presently she saw the little house, her father's house, and there was a light shining from the kitchen window. Jerry-Jo, still preceding her, tapped on the outer door, but when the door fell open Jerry-Jo was gone! Alone, Priscilla confronted her father, and saw with surprise that he evidently expected her. While the look of hatred and doubt still rested in his eyes, there was also a look of dumb pity. No word was spoken. Nathaniel merely stepped aside and closed the door behind her. Then she began a strange, breathless hunt for something which, at first, she could not call by name; it evaded and eluded her. Something was missing; something she wanted desperately; but the rooms were horribly dark and lonely, and the stillness hurt her more and more.

At last she came back to her father and the warm, lighted kitchen.

"I cannot find—my mother," she said, and the reality set her trembling.

"Your—mother? I—I cannot find her, either. I thought she—followed you!"

Cold and shivering, Priscilla sat up in bed. Her teeth chattered and there were tears on her cheeks. They did not seem like her own tears. It was as if some one, bending over her, had let them fall from eyes seeking to find her in the dark.

"Mother!" moaned Priscilla, and with the word a yearning and craving for her mother filled every sense. By a magic that the divine only controls, poor Theodora Glenn in that moment was transformed and radiantly crowned with the motherhood she had so impotently striven to achieve in her narrowed, blighted life. The suffering of maternity, its denials and relinquishings she had experienced, but never its joy of realization, unless, as her spirit passed from the Place Beyond the Winds to its Home, it paused beside the little, narrow, white bed upon which Priscilla lay, and caught that name "Mother!" spoken with a sudden inspiration of understanding.

And that night, with only her grim husband and Long Jean beside her, Theodora escaped the bondage of life.

After the strange dream, Priscilla, awed and trembling, walked to the wide open window of her room. For some moments she stood there breathing fast and hard while the cruel clutch of superstition hurt and held her.

"Something has happened," she faltered, leaning upon the casement and looking down into the silent street, for the restless city had at last fallen to sleep. "Something in Kenmore!"

A red, pulsing planet, shining high over a nearby church tower, caught her eye and brought a throb of comfort to her—a tender thought of home.

"To-morrow, perhaps, a letter will come from Master Farwell; if not, I will write to him. I must know."



CHAPTER XVII

For two or three days things fell into such commonplace routine that the excitement of the big operation and the disturbing dream of the night lost their sharp, clear lines; became blurred and part of the web and woof of the hospital regime. There was little time for introspection or romancing and even the chance meeting with Jerry-Jo was relegated to the non-essentials. Of course he was in the city, but so were the Hornby boys and others from the In-Place. The whirlpool was a big and rushing thing, and if they who had once been neighbours caught a glimpse of each other from dizzy eddies, what did it matter? The possibility of second meetings was rare.

John Boswell had been sympathetic, to a certain degree, with Priscilla concerning the operation and her very evident pride in the part she had been permitted to take in it. With the instinctive horror that many have concerning sickness and suffering, he always made an effort to appear sympathetic when Priscilla grew graphic. Often this caused her to laugh, but she never doubted Boswell's sincere interest in her, personally. That she had overcome and achieved was a thing of real gratification to the lonely man; that she came to him naturally and eagerly, during her hours of freedom, was the only unalloyed joy of his present existence. Even Toky hailed her appearances now with frank pleasure, for she, and she alone, brought the rare, sweet smile to the master's face and gave a meaning to the artistic meals that were planned.

"I think, my Butterfly," Boswell often said to her, "that you have soared to glory through suffering and gore! But it is the soaring and the glory that matter, after all. Do not lay it up against your poor Beetle if he makes a wry face now and then. You are desperately dramatic, you know, but even in my shudders I do not lose sight of the fact that you are a very triumphant Butterfly."

Priscilla beamed upon him; the new light of well-poised serenity did not escape him.

"If I could only explain!" she once said to him as they sat facing each other across the table that Toky had laid so artistically. "When I feel the deepest my words seem shut in a cage; only a few get through the bars. I really believe people all feel the same about their little victories. It isn't the kind of victory; it is the sure realization that you are doing your work—the work you can do best. Why, sometimes I feel as if I were the big All Mother, and the sad, helpless, suffering folk were my dear children just looking to me—to me! And then I try to take the pain and fear from their faces by all the arts my profession has taught me and all the—the something that is in me, and—I tell you——"

Priscilla paused, while the shining light in her big eyes was brightened, rather than lessened, by the tears that gathered, then retreated.

"And for all this," Boswell broke in, "you are to get twenty-five per, or for a particular case, thirty-five per?"

They smiled broadly at each other, for their one huge, compelling joke loomed close.

"Well, sir, when one considers what two intelligent people, like you and me, did with Master Farwell's one hundred dollars, the future looks wonderfully rich! I shall soon be able to repay the loan with interest."

And then they talked a bit of Master Farwell and the In-Place, always skirting the depths gracefully, for Boswell never permitted certain subjects to escape his control. It was the half-playful, but wholly kind dignity that had won for him Priscilla's faith and dependence.

For a week or two after Gordon Moffatt's operation things went calmly and prosaically at the hospital. The rich man recovered so rapidly and satisfactorily that even the outside world took things for granted, and any items of news concerning him were to be found on the inside pages of the newspapers. During his convalescence Priscilla met Doctor Ledyard and Doctor Travers many times. Once, by some mysterious arrangement, she was assigned charge, in the rich man's room, while his own nurse was absent. For three days and nights she obeyed his impatient commands and reasoned with him when he confused his dependent condition with his usual domineering position.

"Damn me!" he once complained to Travers when he thought Priscilla was out of hearing; "that young woman you've given charge over me ought to have a bigger field for her accomplishments. She's a natural-born tyrant. I tried to escape her this morning; had got as far as one foot out of bed when she bore down upon me, calmly, devilishly calmly, pointed to my offending foot, and said: "Back, sir!" Then we argued a bit—I'm afraid I was a trifle testy—and finally she laid hands upon my ankle in the most scientific manner and had me on my back before I could think of the proper adjectives to apply to her impudence."

Travers laughed and looked beyond the sick man's bed to the bowed head of Priscilla as she bent over some preparation she was compounding in an anteroom. From a high window the sunlight was streaming down on the wonderful rusty-coloured hair. The girl's attitude of detachment and concentration held the physician's approving glance, but the wave of hair under the white cap and against the smooth, clear skin lingered in the memory of the man long after he forgot Moffatt's amusing anecdote.

And then, because things were closing in upon Priscilla Glenn's little stage, something happened so commonplace in its character that its effect upon the girl was out of all proportion.

After a rather strenuous day she was sleeping heavily in her little white room when a sharp knock on her door brought her well-trained senses into action at once.

"There's been an accident, Miss Glynn." It was the superintendent who spoke. "Please report on Ward Five as soon as possible."

It was an insignificant accident; such a one as occurs shockingly often in our big cities. A large touring car, with seven passengers, rushing up a broad avenue with a conscientious man at the wheel, had overhauled a poor derelict with apparently no fixed purpose in his befuddled brain. In order to spare the fellow, the chauffeur had wheeled his car madly to one side, and, by so doing, had hit an electric-light pole, with the result that every one was more or less injured, the forlorn creature who had caused the excitement, most of all, for the over-turned machine had included him in its crushing destruction.

Four men and three women were carried to St. Albans and now occupied private rooms, while the torn and broken body of the unknown stranger lay in Ward Five, quite unconscious. He was breathing faintly, and, since they had made him clean and decent, he looked very young and wan as he rested upon the narrow, white bed.

Priscilla stood at the foot of the cot and read the chart which a former nurse had hurriedly made out; then she came around to the side and looked down upon—Jerry-Jo McAlpin!

She knew him at once. The deathlike repose had wiped away much that recent years had engraven on his face. He looked as Priscilla remembered him, standing in his father's boat, proudly playing the man.

For a moment the quiet girl grew rigid with superstitious fear. That deathlike creature before her filled her with unreasoning alarm. She almost expected him to open his black eyes and laughingly announce that he had found her at last! She longed to flee from the room before he had a chance to gain control of her. She breathed fast and hard, as she had that morning when his ringing jeer had stayed her feet as she ran from the Far Hill Place after the night of terror. Then sanity came to her relief and she knew, with a pitying certainty born of her training, that Jerry-Jo McAlpin could never harm her again. That he was a link between the past and the future she realized with strange sureness. He had always been that. He had made things happen; been the factor in bringing experiences to her. She, in self-preservation, would not claim any knowledge of him now; she would care for him and wait—wait until she understood just what part he was to play in her present experience. He might threaten all that she had gained for herself—her peace and security. Her only safeguard now was to ignore the personality before her and respond to the appeal of the "case."

Jerry-Jo was destined to become interesting before he slipped away. Known only as a number, since he had not been identified or claimed, he rapidly rose to importance. After three days of unconsciousness he still persisted, and while his soul wandered on the horizon, his body responded to the care given it and grew in strength. One doctor after another watched and commented on his chances, and in due time Doctor Travers, hearing of the case, stopped to examine it, and, in the interest of science, suggested an operation that might possibly return the poor fellow to a world that had evidently no place for him.

"It's worth trying," Travers said as he and Priscilla stood beside the bed. "We haven't found out anything concerning him, have we?"

Priscilla shook her head.

"Suppose he—well, suppose he had any claim upon you, would you take the chance of the operation for him?"

The deep, friendly eyes were fixed upon the girl. She coloured sharply, then went quite pale. There was a most unaccountable struggle, and Travers smiled as he thought how conscientious she was to feel any deep responsibility in a question he had asked, more in idle desire to make talk than for any other reason.

"Yes," she replied suddenly, as her head was lifted; "yes, I'd give him every chance."

Just then, in one of those marvellous flashes of regained consciousness, the man upon the bed opened his eyes and looked, first at Travers, then at Priscilla. Again his gaze shifted, gaining strength and meaning. From the far place where he had fared for days his mind, lighted by reason, was abnormally clear and almost painfully reinforced by memory. Then he laughed—laughed a long, shuddering laugh that drew the thin lips back from the white, fang-like teeth. Before the sound was finished the light faded from the black eyes and the grim silence shut in close upon the last quivering note.



"We'll take the chance," said Travers. And late that very afternoon they took it.

A week later Priscilla sat beside the man's bed, her right hand upon his pulse, her watch in her left. So intent was she upon the weak movement under her slim fingers that she had forgotten all else until a voice from a far, far distance seemingly, whispered hoarsely:

"So—so this is—you? I'm not dreaming? I wasn't dreaming before when—when he and you came?"

They had all been expecting this. The operation had been very successful, though it was not to give the patient back to life. They all knew that, too.

"Yes, Jerry-Jo, it's I."

There was no tremor in the low voice, only a determination to keep the world from knowing. Jerry-Jo was past hurting any one.

"The—lure got you, too?"

"Yes, the lure got me."

"I knew you that night in the dark—that night in the park—you ran from me. I was lost and—and starving!"

"I came back, Jerry-Jo. I did indeed."

"Have I been here—long?"

"Not very. Do not talk any more. You must rest. There is to-morrow, you know."

The poor fellow was too weak to laugh, but the long teeth showed for a moment.

"I must talk. Listen! Do they know here—about me? know my name?"

"No."

"Don't tell them. Don't tell any one. I have done something for you! They think, back there in Kenmore, that you are with me. I've written that—and schoolmaster hasn't let on. I haven't gone to the Hornbys here, because I stood by you. No one must know. See?"

"Yes, Jerry-Jo, I see. Please lie still now. It shall be as you wish. You have been—very good—for my sake!"

"I've starved and slept in dark holes—for you, and now you and him—have got to take care of me—or—I'll tell! I'll tell, as sure as God hears me!"

"We will take care of you, Jerry-Jo. There! there! I promise; and you know we of the In-Place stand by each other."

He was comforted at last, and fell into the deep sleep of exhaustion. Occasionally, in the days following, he opened his tired eyes and gave evidence of consciousness. He was drifting out calmly and painlessly, and all the coarseness and degeneracy of the half-breed seemed dropping by the way. Sometimes his glance rested on Doctor Travers's face, for the young physician was deeply interested in the case and was touched by the lonely, unclaimed fellow who had served science, but could derive no benefit in return. Often Jerry-Jo's dark eyes fell upon the pitying face of Priscilla Glenn with ever-growing understanding and kindliness. Sometimes in the long nights he clung to her like a child, for she was very good to him; very, very devoted.

One night, when all the world seemed sleeping, he whispered to her:

"You—you don't know, really?"

Priscilla thought he was wandering, and said gently:

"No, Jerry-Jo, really I do not know."

"What will you give me—if I tell you the biggest secret in the world?"

She had his head in the hollow of her arm; he was resting more calmly so. He had been feverish all day.

"What—can I give you, Jerry-Jo?"

The old, pleading look was in the dark eyes, but low passion had vanished forever.

"Could you—would you give me a kiss for the secret?"

"Yes, Jerry-Jo," and the kiss fell upon the white brow.

Could John Boswell have been there then he would have understood.

"You—you are crying! I feel a tear with the kiss!"

The quivering, broken smile smote Priscilla to the heart. The ward was deathly quiet; only the deep breathing of men closer to life than Jerry-Jo McAlpin broke the stillness.

"Why—do you cry?"

"You know, it's a bad habit of mine, Jerry-Jo."

"Yes. You—you cried on his book, you remember?"

"I remember."

"Do—you know where he is—now?"

"No. Do you?"

The head upon the strong, young arm moved restlessly.

"Yes—I know—and I'm—going to tell you! It's the biggest joke I ever knew. Just to think—that you don't know, and he doesn't know, and—and I do!"

A rattling, husky laugh shook the thin form dangerously. Every instinct of the nurse rose in alarm and defence.

"You must not talk any more, Jerry-Jo. Lie still. Come, let us think of the In-Place."

Priscilla slipped her arm from under the dark head, and took the wandering hands in hers. Her random words had power to hold and chain the weak mind.

"I'm going to tell you—where he is—but we'll go back to the In-Place. I want to tell you there, and—he'll come and find you. I'd like to do you both a good turn—for what you've done for me."

Then, after a pause and a gasping breath:

"It's growing dark, but there's Dreamer's Rock and Bleak Head!"

"And, Jerry-Jo," whispered Priscilla, "there's Lone Tree Island, don't you see? Your boat is coming around into the Channel. Please tell me—where he is, Jerry-Jo——"

Priscilla realized he was going fast, and the secret suddenly gripped her with strange power. She must have it; she must know!

"Please, Jerry-Jo, tell me where he is. I have wanted so to know! Listen! Can you not hear—the dear old sounds, the pattering of the soft little waves that the ice has let go free? There's the farm, the woods——" But Jerry-Jo was struggling to rise; his black eyes wide and straining, his thin arms outstretched.

"No!" he moaned hoarsely, and already he seemed far away. "I can't make the Channel. I'm headed for the Secret Portage and the Big Bay."

"Jerry-Jo! oh! tell me, where is he? Where is he?"

But Priscilla knew it was too late. She bent and listened at the still breast that was holding the secret close from her. Then, with a sense of having been baffled, defeated, and cruelly cheated, she dropped her wet face in her hands for a moment before she went to do her last duty for Jerry-Jo.



CHAPTER XVIII

The following June Priscilla Glenn graduated. She and John Boswell grew quite merry over the event.

"I really can't let you spend anything on me," she said laughingly; "nothing more than the cost of a few flowers. I have the awful weight of debt upon me at the beginning of my career. One hundred dollars to Master Farwell, and——"

"The funeral expenses of that poor waif you were so interested in! My dear child, you are as niggardly with your philanthropies as you are with your favours. Why not be generous with me? And, by the way, can you tell me just why that young fellow appealed to you so? I daresay other 'unknowns' drift into St. Albans."

"He looked—you will think me foolish, Mr. Boswell—but he looked like some one I once knew in Kenmore."

The warm June day drifted sunnily into Boswell's study window. There was a fragrance of flowers and the note of birds. Priscilla, in her plain white linen dress, was sitting on the broad window seat, and Boswell, from his winged chair, looked at her with a tightening of the throat. There were times when she made him feel as he felt when Farwell Maxwell used to look at him before the shadow fell between them—the shadow that darkened both their lives.

"And that was why you had a—a Kenmore name graven on the stone?"

"Yes, Mr. Boswell, Jerry-Jo McAlpin. Jerry-Jo is dead, too, you know. They name living people after dead ones. Why not dead people?"

"Why, indeed? It's quite an idea. Quite an original idea. But as to my spending money on your graduation, a little more added to what you already owe me will not count, and, besides, there is that trifle left from Farwell's loan still to your credit."

"Now, Mr. Boswell, don't press me too close! I was a sad innocent when I came from the In-Place, and a joke is a joke, but you mustn't bank on it."

The bright head nodded cheerfully at the small, crumpled figure in the deep chair.

"After you live in New York three years, Mr. Boswell, you never mistake a shilling for a dollar, sir. But just because it is such a heavenly day—and between you and me, how much of that magic fund is left?"

"I've mislaid my account," Boswell replied, the look that Toky watched for stealing over his thin face; "but, roughly speaking, I should say that, with the interest added, about fifty dollars, perhaps a trifle more."

Priscilla threw back her head and laughed merrily.

"I can understand why people say your style is so absorbing," she said presently; "you make even the absurd seem probable."

"Who have you heard comment on my style?" Boswell leaned forward. He was as sensitive as a child about his work.

"Oh, one of the doctors at St. Albans told me that, to him, you were the Hans Christian Andersen of grown-ups. He always reads you after a long strain."

A flush touched the sallow cheeks, and the long, white fingers tapped the chair arms nervously.

"Well!" with a satisfied laugh, "I can prove the amount to your credit in this case without resorting to my style. Would you mind going into your old room and looking at the box that you will find on the couch?"

Priscilla ran lightly from the study, her eyes and cheeks telling the story of her delight.

The box was uncovered. Some sympathetic hand, as fine as a woman's, had bared the secret for her. No mother could possibly have thought out detail and perfection more minutely. There it lay, the gift of a generous man to a lonely girl, everything for her graduating night! The filmy gown with its touch of colour in embroidered thistle flowers; the slippers and gloves; even the lace scarf, cloud-like and alluring; the long gloves and silken hose.

Down beside the couch Priscilla knelt and pressed her head against the sacred gift. She did not cry nor laugh, but the rapt look that used to mark her hours before the shrine in Kenmore grew and grew upon her face.

"You will accept? You think I did well in my—shopping?"

Boswell stood in the doorway, just where a long path of late June sunlight struck across the room. For the girl, looking mutely at him with shining eyes, he was transfigured, translated. Only the great, tender soul was visible to her; the unasking, the kind spirit. Moved by a sudden impulse, Priscilla rose to her feet and walked to him with outstretched hands; when she reached him he took her hands in his and smiled up at her.

"I—I accept," she whispered with a break in her voice. "You have made me—happier than I have ever been in my life!"

Boswell drew her hands to his lips and kissed them.

"And you will come and see me in them"—Priscilla turned her eyes to the box—"when I—dance?"

"You are to dance?"

"We are all to dance."

"I have not seen you dance for many a day. If you dance as you once did there will be only you dancing. Yes, I will come."

And Boswell went. The exercises were held in the little chapel. From his far corner he watched the young women, in uniforms of spotless white, file to the platform for their diplomas. They all merged, for him, into one—a tall, lithe creature with burnished hair, coppery and fine, and an exalted face. Later, from behind the mass of palms and ferns in the dancing hall, he saw only one girl—a girl in white with the tints of the thistle flower matching the deep eyes.

And Priscilla danced. Some one, a young doctor, asked her, and fortunately for him he was a master hand at following. After a moment of surprise, tinged with excited determination, he found himself, with his brilliant partner, the centre of attraction.

"Look! oh, do look at the little Canuck!" cried a classmate.

"I never saw any one dance as she does"—it was Doctor Travers who spoke from the doorway beside Mrs. Thomas—"but once before. It's quite primeval, an instinct. No one can teach or acquire such grace as that."

Then, suddenly, and apropos of nothing, apparently:

"By the way, Mrs. Thomas, Miss Moffatt has been ordered abroad by Doctor Ledyard. He spoke to-day about securing a companion-nurse for her. She's not really ill, but in rather a curious nervous condition. I was wondering if——" His eyes followed Priscilla, who was nearing the cluster of palms behind which Boswell sat.

"Of course!" Mrs. Thomas smiled broadly; "Miss Glynn, of course! She's made to order. The girl has her way to make. She's been rather overdoing lately. I don't like the look in her eyes at times. She never asks for sympathy or consideration, you understand, but she makes every woman, and man, too, judging by that rich cripple, Mr. Boswell, yearn over her. She'd be the merriest soul on earth, with half a chance, and she's the most capable girl I have: ready for an emergency; never weary. Why, of course, Miss Glynn!"

"I'll speak to Doctor Ledyard to-night," said Travers.

Then, strangely enough, Travers realized that he was very tired. He excused himself, and, walking back through the dim city streets to the Ledyard home, he thought of Kenmore and the old lodge as he had not for years.

"I believe I'll run up there this summer," he muttered half aloud. "I'll take mother and urge Doctor Ledyard to join us. I would like to see how far I've travelled from the In-Place in—why it's years and years! All the way from boyhood to manhood."

But Ledyard changed the current of his desire. The older man was sitting in his library when Travers entered, and Helen Travers was in the deep window opening to the little garden space behind the house.

Time had dealt so gently with Helen that now, in her thin white gown, she looked even younger than in the Kenmore days, when her dress had been more severe.

"You're late," said Ledyard, looking keenly at him.

"Very late," echoed Helen, smiling. "I had dinner here and am waiting to be escorted home."

"She's refused my company. Where have you been, Dick?"

"I had to give out the diplomas, you know, at St. Albans."

"It's after eleven now, Dickie." Helen's gaze was full of gentle pride.

"I stopped for an hour to see those little girls play."

"The nurses?" Ledyard frowned. "Girls and nurses are not one and the same thing, to a doctor."

"Oh, come, come, dear friend!" Helen Travers went close to the two who were dearest to her in the world. "Do not be unmerciful. Being a woman, I must stand up for my sex. Did they play prettily, Dick? I'm sure they did not look as dear as they do in their uniforms."

"One did. She was—well, to put it concisely, she was a—dance!"

"Umph! That ruddy-headed one, I bet!" Ledyard turned on another electric light. "See here, Dick, do you think that girl could go abroad with Gordon Moffatt's daughter? Moffatt spoke about her. She rather impressed him while he was in St. Albans. She stood up against him. He never forgets that sort; he swears at it, but he trusts it. The old housekeeper is going along to keep the party in order, but a trained hand ought to go, too. The Moffatt girl has the new microbe—Unrest. It's playing the devil with her nerves. She's got to be jogged into shape."

"I think we could prevail upon Miss Glynn to go. She has her way to make. She's been rather——" Travers stopped short; he was quoting Mrs. Thomas too minutely.

"Rather what, Dick?" Helen had her head against her boy's shoulder.

"Hunting a job," he lied manfully. "Most of those girls are up against it once the training is over."

"And Dick," Helen raised her eyes, "Doctor Ledyard and I were talking of a trip abroad this summer for—ourselves. Will you come? We want the off-the-track places. Little by-products, you know. I'm hungry for—well, for detachment; but with those I love."

"Just the thing, little mother, just the thing!" The In-Place faded from sight. In its stead rose a lonely mountain peak that caught the first touch of day and held it longest. A little lake lay at its foot, and there was the old house where he and Helen had spent so much of the summer while he and she were abroad!

"Where does Miss Moffatt intend to go?" asked Travers.

"That's it. Her ideas at present are typical of her condition. 'Snip the cord that holds me,' she said to me to-day; 'beg father to give me a handful of blank checks and old Mousey'—that's what she calls the housekeeper—'buy a nice nurse for me in case I need one—a nice un-nurse-like nurse,' she stipulated—'and let me play around the world for a few months to see if I can find my real self hiding in some cranny; then I'll come back and be good!' The girl's a fool, but most girls are when they've been brought up as she has been. Moffatt is at his wits' end. Young Clyde Huntter is on the carpet just now. Think of that match! think of what it would mean to Moffatt! There are times when I regret the club and cliff-dwelling age where women are concerned."

"Now, now, my dear friend, please remember my sex."

Helen ran from Richard to Ledyard. "We're all fagged, and the June night is sultry. After all, girls, even women, should be allowed a mind of their own! Take me home, Dick, I'm deeply offended." She smiled and held out her hands.

"If they were all as sane as you, Helen," Ledyard's glance softened. "You are exceptional."

"Every woman is an exceptional something, good friend, if only an exceptional fool. I'm rather proud of Margaret Moffatt's determination to have her way, and that idea of finding herself in some cranny of the old world is simply beautiful. I wonder——"

"What, Helen?"

"I wonder if an old lady like me, a lady with hair turning frosty, might, by any possibility, find her real self left back there—oh! ages, ages before—well, before things happened which she never understood?"

Ledyard's eyes grew moist, but he made no reply.

It was three days later that Priscilla Glenn received a note from Margaret Moffatt, but she had already been prepared for it by Doctor Ledyard and Mrs. Thomas.

"Since they think I need a nurse," the note ran, "will you call at eleven to-morrow and see if you consider me sufficiently damaged to require your care? From what father says, I am prepared to succumb to you at once. Both father and I like strong oppositions!"

The June weather had turned chilly after the brief spell of heat, and when Priscilla was ushered into Margaret Moffatt's private library she found a bright cannel coal fire in the little grate, beside which sat a tall, handsome girl in house gown of creamy white.

"And so you are—Miss Glynn?"

As a professional accepts a non de plume, Priscilla had accepted her name.

"Yes. And you are—Miss Moffatt?"

"Please sit down—no, not way off there! Won't you take this chair beside me? I'm rather an uncanny person, I warn you. If I do not like to have you close to me now, we could never get on—across the water! What belongs to me, and what I ought to have, is mine from the first. Besides, I want you to know the worst of me—for your own sake. Would you mind taking off your hat? You have the most cheerful hair I ever saw."

Priscilla laid her broad-brimmed hat aside and laughed lightly. She was as uncanny as Margaret Moffatt, but she could not have described the charm that drew her to the girl across the hearth.

"I'm rather a hopelessly cheerful person," she said, settling herself comfortably; "it's probably my chief virtue—or shortcoming."

"You know I am not a bit sick—bodily, Miss Glynn. It's positively ridiculous to have a nurse for me, but if I am to get my way with my father I must humour him. A dear old family servant is going with me. Father did want a private cook and guide, but we've compromised on—you! I do hope you'll undertake the contract. I'm not half bad when I have my way. Do you think, now that you have seen me for fifteen minutes, that you could—tolerate me; take the chance?"

"I should be very glad to be with you." Priscilla beamed.

"Your eyes are—blue, I declare! Miss Glynn, by all the laws of nature you should have eyes as dark as mine."

"Yes; an old nurse back in my Canadian home used to say I was made of the odds and ends of all the children my mother had and lost."

"What a quaint idea! I believe she was right, too. That will make you adaptable. Miss Glynn, let me tell you something, just enough to begin on, about myself—as a case. I'm tired to death of everything that has gone before; I do not fit in anywhere. I believe I'm quite a different person from what every one else believes; I've never had a chance to know myself; I've been interpreted by—by generations, traditions, and those who love me. I want to get far enough away to—get acquainted with myself, and then if I am what I hope I am, I will return like a happy queen and triumphantly enter my kingdom. If I am not worthy—well, we will not talk about that! Something, I may tell you some day, has suddenly awakened me. I'm rather blinded and deafened. I must have time. Can you bear with me?"

Margaret Moffatt leaned forward in her chair. Priscilla saw that her large brown eyes were tear-filled; the strong, white, outstretched hands trembling. A wave of sympathy, understanding, and great liking overwhelmed Priscilla, and she rose suddenly and stood beside the girl.

"I—think I was meant—to help you," she said so simply that she could not be misunderstood. "When do we—go?"

"Go? Oh! you mean on the hunt for myself?"

"Yes."

"Father has the refusal of staterooms on two steamers. Could you start in—a week? Or shall we say three weeks?"

"It will not take me a day to get ready. My uniforms——"

"Please, Miss Glynn, leave them behind. I'm sure you're just a nice girl besides being a splendid nurse. I want the nice girl with me."

"Very well. That may take two days longer."

"We'll sail, then, in a week. And will you—will you—will you accept something in advance, since time is so short?"

"Something——?"

"Yes. Your—your salary, you know."

"Oh, you mean money? I had forgot. I shall be glad to have some. I am very poor."

Again the simple, frank dignity touched Margaret Moffatt with pleasurable liking.

"It's to be a hundred and fifty dollars a month and all expenses paid, Miss Glynn."

"A hundred and fifty? Oh! I cannot——"

"Doctor Ledyard arranged it with my father. You see, they know what you are to undergo. I rather incline to the belief that they consider they are making quite a bargain. I hate to see you cover your hair. Somehow you seem to be dimming the sunshine. Good-bye until——"

"Day after to-morrow."

"I will send a check to St. Albans to-night, Miss Glynn."

And she did. A check for two hundred dollars with a box of yellow roses—Sunrise roses they were called.



CHAPTER XIX

There are times in life, especially when one is young, that high peaks are the only landmarks in sight. Priscilla Glenn felt that henceforth her Road was to be a highway constructed in such a fashion that airy bridges would connect the lofty altitudes, and all below would exist merely as views.

Her first thought, on the day following her interview with Margaret Moffatt, was to get to John Boswell, and, as she laughingly put it, pay off her debts!

Two hundred dollars and a full month's money from St. Albans! Gordon Moffatt certainly could not feel richer than she. And then the months ahead! Well—one could get dizzy on one's own heights. So Priscilla calmed herself by a day of strenuous shopping and looked forward to the evening with Boswell.

A dim drizzle set in late in the afternoon, and there was a chill in the air that penetrated sharply. The mist transformed everything, and, to tired, overexcited nerves, the real had a touch of the unreal. The park glistened: the tender new green on tree, bush, and grass looked as if it had just been polished, and the early flowers stood crisply on their young stalks.

At the point where once she had met poor Jerry-Jo McAlpin, Priscilla paused and was taken into control by memory and the long-ago Past. Quite unaccountably, she longed to have her mother, even her father, know of her wellbeing. Surely they would forgive everything if they knew just how things had turned out for her! She almost wished she had decided to go back to the In-Place before she started on her trip abroad. She could have made them understand about her and poor Jerry-Jo. Was old Jerry waiting and waiting? Something clutched Priscilla sharply. The loneliness and silence of the Place Beyond the Winds enfolded her like a compelling dream. How they could patiently wait, those home folks of hers! And how dear they suddenly became, now that she was going into the new life that promised her her Heart's Desire!

Then she decided: since she could not go to them she must write to Master Farwell, he had never answered her last letter, and beg him to tell them all about it. He would go, she felt sure, and, by some subtle magic, she seemed to see him passing along the red-rock road, his long-caped coat flapping in the soft wind, his hair blowing across his face, the dogs following sociably. He'd go first to old Jerry's, and then afterward, an hour, maybe, for it would be hard for Jerry McAlpin—he would go to Lonely Farm by way of the wood path that led by the shrine in the open place—was the skull still there with the long-dead grasses in its ears? It would be night, perhaps, when the master reached the farm; maybe the star would be shining over the hemlock——

At this point Priscilla paused and caught her breath sharply. She had come out of the park by the gateway opposite Boswell's apartment, and just ahead of her, across the street, was a thin, stooping figure with caped coat flapping in the rising wind, and hair blowing across a bent face.

"I—I am dreaming!" The words came brokenly. "I am bewitched!"

But with characteristic quickness of thought and action she put her doubt to the test. Running across the space between her and that slow-stepping figure she panted huskily:

"Master Farwell! Master Farwell!"

He turned and fixed his deep, haunting eyes upon her.

"It's Priscilla Glenn!" he whispered, as if to reassure himself; "little Priscilla of the In-Place."

By some trick of over-stimulated imagination Priscilla tried to adjust the gentle, kindly man she knew and loved to the strange creature into which he had evolved since last she met him, but she could not! To her he would always be the friend and helper, the understanding guide of her stormy girlhood. The rest was but shadows that came and went, cast by happenings with which she had nothing to do.

They were holding each other's hands under the window from which Boswell was, perhaps, at that very moment watching and waiting.

"Oh! my Master Farwell!" The tears rolled from the glad eyes. "I did not know how far and how sadly I had gone until this minute!"

"But you have not forgotten to be little Priscilla Glenn. My dear! My dear! how glad and thankful I am to see you. You have grown—yes; you have grown into the woman I knew you would. Your eyes are—faithful; your lips still smile. Oh! Priscilla, the world has not"—he paused and his old, quivering laugh rang out cautiously—"the world has not—doshed you!"

And then Priscilla caught him by the arm.

"You have not seen—him?" she looked upward.

"No. I was getting up my courage. The bird just freed from its cage—is timid."

"Come! A minute will not matter. I must know about my home people."

They walked on together. Then, because her heart was beating fast and the tears lying near, she drew close to her deepest interest by a circuitous way.

"Tell me of—of Mrs. McAdam and Jerry McAlpin?"

"Mrs. McAdam is famous and rich. The White Fish Lodge has a waiting list every summer. The—the body of Sandy drifted into the Channel a month after you left. Bounder found it. You remember how he used to know the sound of Sandy's engine? The day the body was washed up he—seemed to know. One grave is filled, and Mary McAdam has put a monument between the two graves with the names of both boys. Jerry McAlpin has grown old and—and respectable. He has a fancy that Jerry-Jo will come back a fine gentleman. All these years he has been preparing for the prodigal. The young devil has never sent a line to his father. A bad lot was Jerry-Jo."

And then Priscilla told her story with many a catch in her voice.

"You see—he did it for me, Master Farwell. He was not all bad. Who is, I wonder? He lies in a quiet spot Mr. Boswell and I found far out in the country. There's a hemlock nearby and a glimpse of water. I—I think I will not let old Jerry know. While he waits, he is happy. While he is getting ready, life will mean something to him. And oh! Master Farwell, when—when Jerry-Jo went, he thought he was going through the Secret Portage to the Big Bay. I believe he will—welcome his father in the open some day. I will not send word back to the In-Place."

Farwell frowned.

"Boswell has touched you with his fanciful methods," he muttered; "is it—for the best?"

"I am sure it is. And—my—my people, Master Farwell, my mother?"

At this Farwell started and stepped back. The light from an electric lamp fell full on the girl's quivering, brilliant face. He had told Boswell of the mother's death.

"You—you did not know?" he asked. "She died——"

"Died? Master Farwell, my mother dead!"

"You see—how it hurts when Boswell plays with you?"

A note of bitterness crept into the voice.

"When the day of reckoning comes—it hurts, it hurts like—hell!"

He had forgotten the girl, the white, frantic face.

"Tell me, tell me when she, my poor mother, died?"

The words brought him back sharply, and with wonderful tenderness he told her.

"Long Jean was with her. She would have her and no other, because she said Jean had helped you into the world and only she should help her out. It is a beautiful story they tell in Kenmore of your mother's passing. She thought she was going to you. She seemed quite happy once she found the way!

"'I have found her!' she cried just at the last, 'and she—understands!'"

"And I did, I did!" sobbed Priscilla.

A passerby noticed the sound and paused to look at the two sharply.

"Come, come," Farwell implored her; "we will arouse suspicion. Let us get back to—to Boswell. I haven't much time, you see. I have promised Pine to be back in ten days. Ten days!"

"You promised—Pine?"

"And you never knew?" Farwell gave an ugly laugh. "Well, I carried the ball and chain without a whimper, I can say that for myself. Pine is my ball and chain. Because he isn't all devil, because he knows I am not, he went off to play on Wyland Island. You know they kill the devil there the second week in June. Have you forgotten? Well, Pine has gone to take a stab at satan, and I'm free—for ten days. Free!"

"And then?"

"And then I'm going back voluntarily, and—assume the ball and chain!"

"Master Farwell!"

"Do not pity me! It doesn't matter now. I only wanted to—settle with Boswell. I've been in town—three days."

They were nearing the big apartment house; lights from the windows were showing cheerily through the misty fog. A chill fear shook Priscilla as she began to comprehend the meaning of Farwell's words. In her life Boswell, and this man beside her, stood for friendship in its truest, highest sense, and she felt that she must hold them together in spite of everything. She stood still and gripped Farwell's arm.

"You—you shall not go to him," she whispered, "until you tell me—how you are to pay him—for what he has done!"

Farwell's white, grim face confronted her.

"How does one pay another for lying to him, cheating him, and—and playing with him as though he were an idiot or a child?"

"Why did he do it, Master Farwell, why did he do it?"

"Because——" But for very shame Farwell hesitated. "It makes no difference," he muttered. "I'm no fool and Boswell shall find it out."

"He has told me—the story." Priscilla still stayed the straining figure. "All his life he has given and given to you all that was in his power to give. He is the noblest man I ever knew, the gentlest and kindest, and I never knew a man could love another as he has loved you. What have you given to him—really? The smiles and jokes of the days long ago that were heavenly to him—what did they cost you? He gave, and gave his heart's best; he lied and cheated you, that you might have—some sort of peace in—in Kenmore. Oh! if you only knew how he has hated it all, how he has struggled to keep up the play even when he was so weary that the soul of him almost gave out! And now you come to—to pay him with hate and revenge when you have the only thing he wants in all the world at your command—to give him!"

The impassioned words fell into silence; the uplifted face with its shining eyes, mist-wet and indignant, aroused Farwell at last.

"And that is?" he asked.

"Yourself! your faith! See, that is his light. He is waiting—for me, because, since you sent me to him, he has been kind, heavenly kind to me, for your sake! Everything is, has always been, for your sake. Go to him, Master Farwell—go alone. I will come by and by; not now. Pay him for all he has done for you—all these lonely years!"

Farwell no longer struggled. He took Priscilla's hands in a long, close clasp.

"What a woman you have become, Priscilla Glenn! Thank you."

Without a word more they parted: Farwell to go to the reckoning; Priscilla to walk in the mist for a bit longer.

All that occurred in Boswell's library Priscilla was never to know.

There had been a moment of shock when Boswell, raising his eyes to greet Priscilla, saw Farwell Maxwell standing in the doorway.

"You have come!" Boswell gasped, with every sacred thing at stake.

"I—have come."

"For—what—Max?"

"To—to thank you, if I can. To—to tell you my story."

* * * * *

In the outer room Toky artistically held the dinner back. The honourable master and his strange but equally honourable friend must not be disturbed. Something was happening; but after a time Boswell laughed as Toky had never heard him laugh; so it was well, and the dinner could bide its time.

Then Priscilla came, wet and white-faced, but with the "shine-look" in her eyes that Toky, despite his prejudices and profession, had noted and respected.

"We will have the dinner now, Mees?" as if Toky ever considered her to that extent!

"I will—see Mr. Boswell."

"He has—honourable friend."

"My friend, Toky. The honourable friend is mine, also! And, oh! the flowers, Toky! There are no roses like the June roses. How wonderfully you have arranged them! A rose should never be crowded."

Toky grinned helplessly.

"Tree hours I take to make—look beautifully. One hour for each—rosy. That why it look beautifully."

"Yes, that is why it looks—beautifully. Three hours and—you, Toky!"

Boswell and Farwell were sitting in front of the grate, upon which the wood lay ready to light. Their faces were pale and haggard, but their eyes turned to Priscilla without shame or doubt.

"There is much—to talk about," said Boswell with his ready friendliness; "Max—your Farwell and mine—has told me——"

"After dinner, dear friends. I am hungry, bitterly hungry and—cold!"

"Cold?"

"Yes; see, I am going to set the wood to burning. By the time we come back the room will be ready for us."

"To be sure!" Boswell sidled from his deep chair, the pinched look on his face relaxing.

"A fire, to be sure. Now, Max, no one but a woman would have thought of a fire in June."

"No one but Priscilla!" Farwell added.

They talked before the fire until late that evening. Priscilla's plans were discussed and considered. So full was she of excitement and joy that she did not notice the shock of surprise that Farwell showed when the names of Ledyard and Travers passed her lips. Seeing that she either did not connect the men with her past, or had reasons for not referring to it, Farwell held his peace. It was long afterward that he confided his knowledge to Boswell, and that wise friend bade him keep his secret.

"It's her life, and she's treading her Road," he said; "she has an odd fancy that her Heart's Desire lies just ahead. I cannot see that either you or I have the right to awaken her to realities while she lives so magically in her dreams."

After Priscilla's own plans were gone over and over again, Boswell said quietly:

"I'm going back to that blessed In-Place of yours, Butterfly. You remember how I told you, the first day I met you, that I could not understand any one choosing the dangerous Garden when he might have—the Place Beyond the Winds?"

Priscilla leaned forward, her breath coming sharply.

"You mean—you are going to—to live in Kenmore?"

"Yes! Live! That is a bright way of putting it. Live! live! The Beetle is—going to live!"

Priscilla looked about at the rich comfort of the room, thought of what it meant to the delicate cripple crouching toward the blaze, his deep eyes flame-touched and wonderful. Then she looked at Master Farwell, whose lips were trembling.

"He—he calls that—living!" he said slowly. "Tell him, Priscilla, of the bareness and hardness of the life. I have tried to, but he will not listen."

The tears, the ready, easy tears filled Priscilla's eyes, and her heart throbbed until it hurt.

"He will love the hemlocks and the deep red rocks," she said, as if speaking to herself; "he will love the Channel and the little islands, he will love the woods—and the wind does not blow hard there—he will be glad of that."

"But the ugly, wretched bareness of my hut, Priscilla! For heaven's sake, make him see that!"

"But the—fireplace, Master Farwell!"

"And—the friend beside it!" Boswell broke in; "and no more loneliness. A beetle that has crawled in the Garden so long will thank God for a real place—of its own. 'Tis but a change of scene for the Property Man."

"I love the Garden!" murmured Priscilla, sitting between the two men, her clasped hands outstretched toward the fire, which was smouldering ruddily.

"That is because you have wings, Butterfly," Boswell whispered.

"And no fetter on your soul," Farwell said so softly that only Boswell heard.

"I see," Priscilla childishly wandered on, "such a lovely trail leading, leading—where?"

"Where, indeed?" Boswell was watching her curiously.

"That is the beauty of it! I cannot see beyond the next step. All my life I have tried to keep my yearnings within bounds; now I—just follow. It's very, very wonderful. Some day I am going back to the In-Place. I shall find you both sitting by Master Farwell's beautiful fire, I am sure. It will be the still morning time, I think, and you will be so glad to see me, and I shall tell you—all about it!"

"Heaven keep you!"

Boswell's voice was solemn and deep.

"Life will keep her safe," Farwell said with a laugh. "Life will take no liberties with her. She got her bearings, Jack, before the winds knocked her. Let us both walk home with her. What sort of a night is it?"

Priscilla went to the window.

"It's rather black," she returned; "as black as the big city ever is. The mist is clearing; it's a beautiful night."



CHAPTER XX

"Of course," Priscilla leaned back in her deep-cushioned chair and laughed from sheer delight, "I was a better girl in my former life than I ever had any idea of, or I wouldn't have been given this——"

She and Margaret Moffatt were sitting on the piazza of a little Swiss inn. Below them lay a tiny lake as blue and as clear as a rare gem; round about them towered snowy peaks, protectingly. All that was past—was past! There did not seem to be any future; the present was sufficient.

"I think you must have been rather a good child, back there," Margaret Moffatt said, looking steadfastly at the girl near her; "and, anyway, you ought to have a rich reward for your hair if for no other reason."

"A recompense, you mean?"

"Heavens! no! I was thinking, as I often do when I see the lights in your hair, that for making people so cheerful and contented nothing is too good for you. I'm extremely fond of you, Priscilla Glynn! It's only when you put on your cap and apron manner that I recall—unpleasant things. Just tuck them out of sight and let us forget everything but—this! Isn't it divine?"

"It's—yes, it is divine, Miss Moffatt."

"Now then! Along with the cap and apron, please pack away Miss Moffatt and Miss Glynn. Let us be Priscilla and Margaret. This is a whim of mine, but I have a fancy for knowing what kind of girls we are. No one can tamper with us here. Dear old Mousey never gets above a dead level, or below it. Practically we are alone and detached. Let us play—girls! Nice, chummy girls. Do you know, I never had a friend in my life who wasn't labelled and scheduled? I was sent to school where just such and such girls were sent—girls proper for me to know. Often they were not, but that was not considered so long as they wore their labels. It wasn't deemed necessary for me, or my kind, to go to college: our lines of action were chosen for us. Certain labelled men were presented; always labels, labels! Even when I was running about with my label on I used to have mad moments of longing to snatch all the hideous things off—my own as well as others—and find out the truth! And here we are, you and I! I do not want to know anything about you; I want to find out for myself, in my own way. I want you to forget that I ever wore a tag. Did you ever have a girl chum?"

"I think I know, now," Priscilla said quietly, "why this particular little heaven was given to me. I never, in all my life, had a girl friend. Think of that! I did not realize what I was missing until I—came into your life. Actually, I never had a girl or woman friend in the sense you mean. I was a lonely, weird little child; and then I—I came to the training school; and the girls there did not like me—I was still weird——"

"Now, Priscilla, I do not want to know anything more about you! I intend to find you out for myself. Come, there's a boat down there, big enough for you and me. Do you row?"

"Yes, and paddle."

"You lived near the water! Ha! ha!"

"And you do—not row, Margaret?"

"No."

"Then you have never lived at all. You must learn to use oars and a paddle. It's when you have your own hand on the power that makes you go—that you live."

Margaret Moffatt turned and looked at Priscilla.

"You say, haphazard, the most Orphic things. There are times when I can imagine you before some shrine making an offering and chanting all sorts of uncanny rites. Of course it is when one has her hand on her own tiller, and is heading for what she wants, that she begins to—live. I declare, I haven't felt so young in—twenty years! I'm twenty-five, Priscilla. My father considers me on the danger-line. Poor daddy!"

"I'm——"

"I do not want to know your age, Priscilla. Mythological characters are ageless."

Those were the days when Priscilla Glenn and Margaret Moffatt found their youth. Safeguarded by the faithful old housekeeper, who, happily, could understand and sympathize, they played the hours away like children.

"We'll travel by and by," promised Margaret. "It's rather selfish for me to hold you here when all the world would be fresh to you."

"I take root easily," Priscilla returned, "and I'm like a plant we have in my old home. My roots spread, and time is needed to strengthen them; suddenly I shoot up and—flower. The little Canadian blossom doesn't seem to justify the strong, spreading roots. I hope you will not find me disappointing, Margaret."

Margaret Moffatt smiled happily.

"Just to think," she said, "that my real self and your real self were waiting for us here behind the white hills! All along, through generations and generations, they have been acquainted and have loved and trusted each other, and then we, the unreal selves, came! Sometimes I wonder"—Margaret looked dreamy—"what they think of us, just between themselves? I am sure your true self must be prouder of you than mine can be of me, for, with everything at my command, what am I? While you—oh, Priscilla, how you have made everything tell!"

But Priscilla shook her head.

"Still," Margaret went on, "things were not at my command. They were all there, but pigeon-holed and controlled. Such and such things were for nice little girls like me! After a time I got to believe that, and it was only when, one day, I touched something not intended for me that my soul woke up. Priscilla, did you ever feel your soul?"

"Yes."

"Isn't it wonderful? It makes you see clearly your—your——"

"Ideal?" suggested Priscilla.

"Yes; the thing you want to be; the thing that seems best to you without the interpretation of others. It stands unclouded and holy; and nothing else matters."

"And you never forget—never!"

"No. Your eyes may be blinded for a moment, but you do not forget—ever!"

They were out on the gemlike lake now, and Priscilla was sternly instructing Margaret how to handle an oar.

"It will never go the way you want it to," Margaret protested, making an ineffectual dab at the water.

"When it does you will know the bliss! Get a little below the surface, and have faith in yourself."

And that was the day that Priscilla caught a new light on Margaret's character. They landed at a tiny village across the lake and wandered about, Margaret talking easily to the people in their own tongue, Priscilla straining to follow by watching faces and gestures. While they stood so, discussing the price of some corals, a little child came close to them and slipped a deliciously dimpled, but very dirty little hand in Margaret's. At the touch the girl started, turned first crimson and then pale, and looked down. Suddenly her eyes deepened and glowed.

"The darling!" she whispered, and bent to catch what the child was saying. Presently she looked up, tears dimming her eyes, and said to Priscilla, "She says a new baby came to their house last night. She wanted to tell—me!"

"And ten already have been there," broke in a brown-faced native woman.

"But she is glad, and she wanted me to know! Come, my sweet, tell me more about the baby, and then we will go and see it."

They sat down under a clump of trees, and the dirty little maid nestled close to Margaret, while with uplifted head and unabashed confidence she told of the mystery.

Priscilla watched Margaret Moffatt's face. She was almost awed by the change that had come over it. The aloofness and pride which often marked it had disappeared as if by magic; the tenderness, passionate in its intentness, cast upon the little child, moved her to wonder and admiration. Later they went to the poor hovel and bent beside the humble bed on which the mother and child lay. Then it was that Priscilla played her part and made comfortable and grateful the overburdened creature, worn and weak from suffering.

"'Twas the good God who sent you," murmured she.

"'Twas your little maid," smiled Margaret, tucking a roll of bills under the hard, lumpy pillow. "Take time to love the babies—leave other things—but love them and enjoy them."

"Yes, my lady."

On the way back in the boat Margaret was very silent for a time as she watched Priscilla row; finally she said:

"Did it surprise you—my show of feeling for the—the child?"

"It was very beautiful. I did not know you cared so much for children, and this one was so—dirty."

"But so real! You see I have never had real children in my life. The kinds passed out to nice girls like me were sad travesties. Since I saw the darling of to-day I've been wondering—do not laugh, Priscilla—but I've been wondering what poor, cheated little morsel of humanity, in the unreal world, would find herself in that eleventh miracle of the wretched hovel? And what an art yours is, dear Priscilla! How you soothed away the suffering by your touch. I loved you better as I realized how that training of yours knows neither high nor low when it seeks to heal."

Priscilla thought of the operation on Margaret Moffatt's father, and her quick colour rose.

"And I loved you better when I saw how your humanity knows neither high nor low—just love!"

"Only toward little children. I cannot explain it, but when I touch the babies, their littleness and helplessness make me weak and trembling before—well, before the strength comes in a mighty wave. There is a physical sensation, a thrill, that comes with the first contact, and when they trust me, as that darling did this morning, I feel as if—God had singled me out! Only lately have I begun to understand what this means in me. It is one reason why I came away. I had to think it out. I suppose"—she paused and looked steadily at Priscilla—"I suppose the maternal has always been a master passion in me, and I've rebelled at being an only child; at having no children but the—specialized kind. I have been hungry for so many things I am realizing now."

"In my training I have seen—what you mean. All sorts drift in—to pay the price of love or the penalty of passion, as Doctor Ledyard used to express it; but"—and Priscilla's eyes grew darker—"I used to find—a nurse gets so much closer, you know, than a doctor can—I found that sometimes it was the penalty of love and the price of passion. Those sad young creatures, with only blind instinct to uphold them, were so—divinely human, and paid so superbly. When it comes to the hour of a life for a life, one thing alone matters, I am afraid, and it is the thing you mean, Margaret."

"Yes. And what a horrible puzzle it all is. The thing I mean should be always there—always. The world's wrong when it is not."

Suddenly Priscilla, sending the light boat forward by the impulse of her last stroke, said, as if it were quite in line with all that had gone before:

"There's Doctor Travers on the wharf!"

He heard her, and called back:

"Quite unintentionally, I assure you. I was waiting for the boat to take me across. I've been wandering about, sleeping where I could. I simply find myself—here!"

At this both girls laughed merrily.

"This is the place of Found Personalities," Margaret Moffatt said, jumping lightly to the wharf. "Perhaps you'll come to the inn and have luncheon with us—that is, if you are sure Doctor Ledyard did not send you here to spy on me."

"I haven't seen him since I left America. My mother is with me; she's in a crack of the hills in Italy. She wanted to be alone. Doctor Ledyard will join us later."

"Then come to the house. They serve meals on a dangerously poised balcony over the lake; we curb our appetites for fear our weight may be the one thing the structure cannot stand. Our old housekeeper waits upon us, but is in no wise responsible for the food which is often very bad and lacking in nourishment."

"You seem to thrive on it." Travers looked at the two before him. "I wonder just what it is this air and place have done to you?"

"Tell him, Priscilla."

"Oh, like you, Doctor Travers, we simply found ourselves—here! That's all."

Travers did not leave the inn that night, nor for many days thereafter.

"Doctor Ledyard will join my mother and me early in August," he explained; "until then I'm a floating proposition. I wish you'd let me stay on a while, Miss Moffatt, right here. I want to analyze the food, it puzzles me. Why just this kind of conglomeration should achieve such results is interesting. I've gained five pounds in six days."

"And lost ten years," Margaret broke in. "I never thought of you as young, Doctor Travers; professional men never do seem youthful; but here you're rather a good sort."

And Travers remained, much to the delight of the old housekeeper, who, with a nurse and a doctor in command, cast all responsibility aside.

"Young Miss looks well," she confided to the proprietor's wife, who, fortunately, could understand a word or so of English; "but folks is like weather: the fairer they seem, the nearer a storm. When a day or a person looks uncommonly fair—a weather breeder, says I, and generally, nine times out of ten, I'm right. My young lady is too changed to be comfortable. It's either a breaking up, or——" But here a shout for "Mousey," silenced further prophecy.

The days ran along without cloud or shadow. Quite naturally, perhaps, Priscilla began to think that a drama of life was being enacted in the quiet, detached village. They three were always together, always enjoying the same things, but certainly no man, so she thought, could be with Margaret Moffatt long without falling at her feet. Gradually to Priscilla Glenn this girl stood for all that was fine and perfect. In her she saw all women as women should be. With the adoration she was so ready to give to that which appealed to her, Priscilla lavished the wealth of her affection upon Margaret Moffatt. Surely it was because of Margaret that Doctor Travers stayed on, and became the life of the party. To be sure he was tact itself in making Priscilla feel at ease; but that only confirmed her in her belief that he wanted to please Margaret to the uttermost. Often Priscilla recalled, with keener appreciation, John Boswell's description of Anton Farwell's conception of friendship. In like manner Margaret Moffatt claimed for her companion all that justly belonged to herself. Dispassionately, vicariously, Priscilla learned to know and admire the man who undoubtedly in time would win her one friend. It was all beautiful and natural, and in the lovely detachment it grew and grew. The long walks and drives, the rows upon the lake by sunlight and moonlight, all conspired to perfect the comradeship. They read together, sang together—very poorly to be sure—and once, just to vary the charm, they travelled to a nearby town and danced at a village fete. An odd thing happened there. Owing to high spirits and a sense of unconventionality, they entered into the sports with abandon. Travers even begged a reel with a pretty Swiss maiden, and led her proudly away, much to Margaret's and Priscilla's delight. Later, the men and women of the place came forward, and, entering a little ring formed by admiring friends, performed, separately, the native dances.

Travers watched Priscilla with a puzzled look in his eyes. She trembled with excitement; seemed hypnotized by the exhibition, much of which was delightfully graceful and picturesque. Then, suddenly, to the surprise of every one, she took advantage of a moment's pause and ran into the ring.

"Whatever possesses her?" whispered Margaret to Travers; "she looks bewitched. See! she is—dancing!"

Travers watched the tall, slim figure in the thin white gown over which a light scarf, of transparent crimson, floated as the evening breeze and the girl's motions freed it. At first Priscilla took her steps falteringly, her head bent as if trying to recall the measure and rhythm; then with more confidence she swung into the lovely pose and action. With uplifted eyes and smiling lips, seeming to see something hidden from others, she bent and glided, curtesied and tripped, this way and that.

The lookers-on were wild with delight. The beauty of the thing itself, the willingness of the foreigners to join in the sport, aroused the temperamental enthusiasm, and the clapping and cheering filled the hall with noise. Suddenly the musicians dropped their instruments. They were but human, and, since they could not keep in time with this new and amazing dance, they drew near to admire.

"Play!" pleaded Priscilla, past heeding the sensation she was creating. "The best is yet to come!"

Carried out of himself, entering now wholly into the adventure, Travers caught up a violin near him and sent the bow over the strings with a master touch. He hardly knew what he played; he was himself, carried away on a wave of enchantment.

"Ah!"

The word escaped Priscilla like a cry of glad response.

"Now!"

They two, the musician and the dancer, seemed alone in the open space. The flashing eyes, the cheering voices, the clapping hands, even Margaret Moffatt, pale, puzzled, yet charmed, were obliterated. It was spring time in the Place Beyond the Winds, and the dance of adoration was in full swing, while the old tune, never out of time with the graceful, whirling form, played on and on. And then—the ring melted away, the lights grew dim, and Priscilla stood still.

"I'm—I'm tired," faltered she. A hand was laid upon her arm, some one guided her out of the heated, breathless room; they were alone, she and he, under wide-spreading trees, and a particularly lovely star was pulsing overhead.

"You are crying!" Travers's voice was low and tense. "Why?"

"It—it was the music! It was like something I had heard, and—and I was so tired. I was very foolish. Can you, can Margaret, forgive me?"

"Forgive you? Why, you were—I dare not tell you what you were! Here, sit down. Do not tremble so! Tell me, where did you learn to dance as you do?"

Priscilla had dropped upon the rough rustic seat; she did not seem to notice the hand that rested upon her clasped ones under the thin scarf. She no longer cried, but the tears shone on her long lashes.

"I—I never learned. It—it is I, myself. I thought I had grown into something else, but—I shall always be the same—when I let myself go."

"Let yourself go? Good heavens! Why not let yourself go—forever?" Travers's voice shook. "You have brought joy and youth to us all—to me, who never had youth. What—who are you?" he laughed boyishly. She sat rigidly erect and turned her sad eyes upon him.

"I'm Priscilla Glynn—a nurse! And you? Oh! you are Doctor Travers! Can you not see my beautiful, happy, happy life is ended—must end? Margaret, you, everything this joyous summer has made me—forget. Soon I am going back—where there is no dancing!"