"Heirlooms? Relics?" queried Frederik, puzzled. "Oh—you mean all this junk?" with a comprehensive hand wave that included Dutch clock, Dutch warming pans, Dutch bric-a-brac, and Dutch furniture. "This junk all over the house? Oh, I'll have it carted to the nearest ash heap. It isn't worth a red cent of any one's money."

Peter Grimm strode forward, his lips parted in quick protest. But Colonel Lawton was already answering, with an appraising look about the room:

"I don't know about that, Frederik. It may not be as worthless as you seem to think. Better let me send for a dealer to sort it over after you've gone on your honeymoon. I've heard that some people are fools enough to pay a lot of good money for this sort of antique trash."

"Not a bad idea," approved Frederik. "See what you can do about it, won't you? I want it cleared out. And if I can get rid of it and do it at a profit, too, why, all the better."

"If I could get that old clock," put in Mrs. Batholommey, the light of the bargain hunt shining in her large face, "I might consent to take it off your hands. Of course it isn't really worth anything. But——"

"I've an idea," replied Frederik, with charming dearth of civility, "that it's worth a lot more than you'd pay me for it."

"I hope," she snapped angrily as she glared at Frederik, "that your poor dear uncle is where he can see his mistake now!"

"I am where I can see several," said the Dead Man to ears that could not hear.

"Do you know," pursued Mrs. Batholommey, whose depths of professional sweetness had been turned faintly sub-acid by the events of the day—"do you know, Frederik, what I would like to say to your uncle if I could just once stand face to face with him, this very minute?"

"Yes," smiled Peter Grimm sadly, as he looked deep into her eyes, "I know."

"I should say to him——" began Mrs. Batholommey.

Then she checked herself as at some impulse she herself did not understand, and finished somewhat lamely:

"No, I wouldn't say it, either. He's dead. And we're told we must speak no ill of the dead. Though, for my part, I never could see what right we gain to immunity just by dying. And—oh, by the way, Henry," she broke off as her husband and the lawyer passed out of the vestibule, "Kathrien expects you back for supper. Don't forget, will you, dear? Good-night, Colonel Lawton."

She followed them, closed the front door behind them, and bustled off to look after the arrangements for supper.

Frederik yawned, lighted a cigarette, and sauntered out into the office, Peter Grimm watching him with infinitely sad reproach in his luminous eyes.

Then, left alone in the room he had loved, the Dead Man looked about him at the dear old bits of furniture and ornaments that had meant so much to him and whose fate he had just heard weighed between auctioneer's hammer and rubbish heap.

He moved across to the rack, as if by lifelong instinct, and hung his antique hat on its accustomed peg. The simple, everyday action brought him so vividly close to older days that, as Marta pottered in with another newly filled lamp, he accosted her.

"Marta!" he called, as she gave no sign of recognition to his kindly nod and smile.

She set down the lamp in its place on the piano, crossed to the pulley-weight clock, and noisily wound it. As the old woman started back toward her kitchen, the Dead Man put himself once more in her way.

"Marta!" said he, then more loudly and peremptorily, "Marta!"

She passed within an inch of his outstretched hand and entered the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. Peter Grimm stared blankly after his housekeeper.

"I seem to be a stranger in my own house," he murmured. "My friends pass me by. Their gross eyes cannot see me. Their gross ears will not hear me. But—Lad knew me. He came to meet me, wagging his tail just as he used to. I—I remember I've more than once noticed his going to meet other people like that. People I couldn't see in those days."

Frederik lounged back from the office, cigarette in mouth. He took out his watch, compared it with the clock on the wall, slipped it back into his pocket, and was crossing to the outer door when the telephone bell on the desk jangled.

Frederik laid down his cigarette, seated himself at the desk, and picked up the receiver.

"Hello!" he called.

At the reply, he glanced around hastily, to make sure he was not likely to be overheard. Then, sinking his voice almost to a whisper and speaking with a nervous, almost guilty eagerness, he answered:

"Yes. Yes. This is Mr. Grimm. Mr. Frederik Grimm. I've been waiting all day to hear from you, Mr. Hicks. How are you? Wait one moment, please."

He rose, crossed the room, closed the door into the dining-room,—the only door that had been open,—glanced up into the bedroom gallery to make certain it was empty, then hurried back to the telephone.

"Yes," said he. "Go ahead."

There was a brief pause while he listened. Then he replied, in a tone of laboured indifference:

"Oh, no. You're quite mistaken. I am not 'eager to sell.' Not at all. As a matter of fact," he continued unctuously, "I much prefer to carry out my dear uncle's wishes and keep the business in the family. You must surely remember how determined he was that it should be kept on.—What?—'If I could get my price,' eh? That's different, of course. It puts a new aspect on the whole affair.—What? Oh, well, an offer such as that deserves careful thought. I could not decline it offhand.—No, I admit it is very tempting.—'Talk it over?' Certainly."

He paused, then went on in answer to a query from the other end of the wire:

"To-morrow? No, I'm afraid not. You see, I'm going to be married to-morrow. A man does not want to be bothered with business deals on his wedding day.—No, the next day won't do, either, I'm afraid. You see, we are sailing directly for Europe. Thank you. Yes, I deserve all the congratulations you can offer me.—What?—Very well. This evening, then. That will suit me perfectly. You're in New York, I suppose? What time will it be convenient to you to get to Grimm Manor?—What?—Yes, that's all right. No. Not here at the house. I'll meet you at the hotel. The tavern.—Yes, I'll be there promptly.—What?"

He listened a moment, then laughed in evident, if subdued, amusement.

"So the dear old gentleman used to tell you his plans never failed, did he?" he questioned. "Yes, I've heard the same boast from him hundreds of times. That's one reason why I want the deal kept quiet till it's settled. So I asked you to meet me at the tavern instead of here at the house. I don't want it thought by other people that I'd run counter to his plans in any way. God rest his soul! Hey? 'What would he say if he knew?' I hate to think. He could express himself very forcibly when his dear, stubborn old will was crossed. You may remember that. Oh, well, it's life. Everything must change."

There was a roll of thunder. At the same instant the windows flared pink-white with lightning. A flash of electricity ran purring and crackling along the telephone itself.

Frederik, with a sharp cry of surprise, dropped the instrument, and squeezed his electrically shocked arm. Then gingerly he picked up the telephone, replaced the receiver, and turned away toward the window seat.

Peter Grimm stood eyeing the telephone as if the man who had so lately been at the other end of the wire were directly in front of him.

"You don't know it, Hicks," said the Dead Man quietly, "but you will never carry this plan of yours through. We are going to meet very soon, you and I."

As if in response to his strange prophecy, the telephone jangled once more. Frederik returned to the desk and put the receiver to his ear.

"Hello!" he called. "Oh, it's you, Mr. Hicks? No, they didn't cut us off. I thought you were through.—What?—A little louder, please. I can't hear you very well.—What?—You're feeling ill? Oh, I'm sorry.—What?—Oh, yes, it will do just as well to send your lawyer instead, if you find you're too sick to make the journey. Your lawyer will be empowered to attend to everything in your name, I suppose?—Good.—Then we can close the deal to-night. At the hotel and at the same time. All right. What did you say his name was?—Shelp?—All right. Good-bye. I hope you'll feel much better in the morning, Mr. Hicks."

He relighted his cigarette, humming a little tune under his breath as he walked from the desk. His narrow face was very content.

"And that's the boy I loved and trusted!" said Peter Grimm, half aloud, watching Frederik take his hat and umbrella from the rack and leave the house. "I wonder if I am to unearth many more of my mistakes. I come upon a new one at every turn."

His wandering gaze rested on the door of Kathrien's room, in the gallery above. His lips parted in the old whimsical smile. Lifting his voice, he gave the odd call that had for years been a signal to Kathrien of his presence in the house and his desire to see her.

"Ou-oo!" rang out the familiar cry.

And, before its echoes could die away, Kathrien was out of her room and at the stairhead. She stood there an instant, dazed, wondering, like some one half-awakened from heavy sleep.

Looking down into the room below, she slowly descended the stairs.

"I thought some one called me," she said.

And though she spoke the words in her own brain and not from the lips, Peter Grimm heard and answered her.

"You did," said he. "I called you."

Filled with a sense that she was not alone, yet seeing and hearing no one, she came down into the seemingly vacant room. And, still without words, she said:

"I thought I heard a voice like—like——"

"Yes," answered the Dead Man again, "you wanted me, little girl. That's why I have come. There, there!" he soothed, as she stood with troubled face trying to formulate and understand the strange sensation that had suddenly taken possession of her. "Don't worry, Katje. It'll come out all right. We'll arrange things very differently. I've come back to——"

She moved away, unhearing. She passed unseeing from the loving outstretched arms.

"Katje!" he called tenderly.

But she did not turn at the loving appeal in his soundless voice.

"Oh, Katje! Katje!" he pleaded, following her. "Can't I make my presence known to you? Oh, don't cry!"

For the tears had welled up, unbidden, in her eyes.

And this time his words, in a vague, roundabout way, seemed to reach her understanding.

"Oh, well," she sighed, drying her eyes. "Crying doesn't help."

"Ah!" exclaimed Peter Grimm eagerly. "Good! Good! She hears me! Smile, little girl! Smile, I say."

A trembling ghost of a smile played about her sad lips.

"That's right!" he encouraged. "Smile! Smile! You haven't smiled before since I—since I found there was a place a million times happier and lovelier and more wonderful than this world that I left. Listen, little girl! Listen, Katje, and try to understand me. There are no dead. We never really die. We couldn't if we tried to. See the gardens out there. Look!"

As if in response to his words, Kathrien's half-smiling face was turned toward the flowering garden beds that stretched away on every hand, just outside the window.

"See the gardens," he went on, glad at his own seeming success in catching and holding her attention. "They die. But they come back all the better for it. All the fresher and younger and more beautiful. What people call death is nothing more than a nap. We wake from it freshened—rested—made over again. It's a wonderful sleep that people fall into, old and slow and tired out. And they spring up from it like happy children tumbling out of bed,—ready to frolic through another world. It is as foolish and wrong to mourn for people who fall into that dear sleep as to mourn for the children when they close their eyes at the end of the day. There is no death. There are no dead. It is all rest and wonder and beauty and perfect bliss. So stop being sad for me, my own little girl!

"There!" he cried in triumph, as the smile deepened on her pale face. "You're happier already! And you begin to understand me. You can hear what I am saying. Because no sin, no grossness has ever shut your ears to all but earthly sounds. Now listen to me carefully: Katje, I want you to break that silly, wicked promise I wheedled you into making. I want you to break it. You mustn't ruin your life—and James's—by marrying Frederik. It would mean misery for every one. Most of all for you, little girl. That's why I came here. To undo the harm that my blindness and obstinacy brought about. When that is settled I can take my journey back in peace. I can't go until you break that promise. And—and oh, I long to go, Katje! Katje!" his voice rising in yearning entreaty, as the smile faded from her face and her big eyes once more filled. "Isn't my message any clearer to you?"

"Oh," sighed Kathrien, half aloud. "I'm so alone—so alone!"

"Alone?" he echoed. "You are not alone, Katje. I'm here. Can't you feel my presence? And then there's your mother. The mother you were too little to remember. I have met her, Katje. I have met your mother. She knew me at once. After all those years. 'You are Peter Grimm!' she said. I told her you had a happy home here. And she said she knew that. Then I told her about the future I had arranged, and the plans I'd made for you and Frederik. And she said: 'Peter Grimm, you have overlooked the most important thing in the world:—Love! Give her the right to the choice of her lover. It is her right.' Then it came over me all at once that I had made a terrible mistake. That I had been presumptuous and had tried to play Providence and shape the future of another. At that moment, Katje, you called to me. And I came back to show you the way."

He moved nearer to her.

"Your mother," he whispered, bending over the girl as she sank into a chair by the fire, her eyes dreaming and full of a new joy, "your mother told me to lay my hand on your dear head and give you her blessing. And she said I must tell you she will be with you,—close—close to you—in heart and thought, until the day shall come when she can hold you in her arms. You and your loved husband."

Kathrien's dreamy gaze strayed from the fire-flicker on the hearth to the office door, on whose farther side she knew Hartmann was at work.

"Yes," smiled Peter Grimm, noting her glance. "You and James. And the message ended in this kiss."

He touched his lips to her forehead. And, at the unfelt contact, the light again sprang into her eyes.

"Can't you see I'm trying to help you, Katje?" he begged. "Can't you even hope? Come, come! Hope! Why, anybody can hope. It is the very easiest and most natural thing on earth. Especially when one is young—as you and I are. What is Youth but perpetual Hope?"

The light in her eyes deepened. Her look strayed again to the closed office door. She rose and took a step toward it, then turned, passed her hand caressingly over the flowers on the desk, and moved over to the piano.

She seated herself on the music stool and, for the first time in ten endless days, let her fingers stray over the keys. In a hushed little voice she began to sing:

"The bird so free in the heavens Is but the slave of the nest. For all things must toil as God wills it, Must laugh and toil and rest. The rose must bloom in the garden, The bee must gather its store. The cat must watch the mousehole, And the dog must guard the door."

"Oh!" she broke off in sudden self-reproach. "How can I sit here singing,—at a time like this!"

"Sing!" urged the Dead Man. "Why not? Why not at a time like this as well as at any other time? Is it because you are afraid you are not being sad enough at losing me? You haven't lost me. Nothing is ever lost. The old uncle you loved doesn't sleep out in the churchyard dust. That is only a dream. He is here—alive! More alive than ever he was. A thousandfold more alive. All his age and weaknesses and faults are gone. Youth is glowing in his heart. He is bathed in it. It radiates from him. Eternal Youth that no one still on earth can know. Oh, little girl of mine, if only I could tell you what is ahead of you! It's the wonderful secret of the Universe. And you won't hear me? You won't understand?"

Still smiling, but without turning toward the loving, eager Spirit close beside her, Kathrien was looking out into the fragrant June dusk. Peter Grimm shrugged his shoulders.

"I must try some other way of making you hear," said he.

He looked up at the closed door of Willem's sick room for a moment, then nodded.

"Here comes some one," he announced, with the old whimsical twist of his lips, "who will know all about it. The secrets of the other world are as plain as day to him. He has told me so himself."



CHAPTER XIV

"I CAN'T GET IT ACROSS"

The door of Willem's room opened, and Dr. McPherson came out on the landing. He moved slowly, hesitatingly, as though impelled by some force outside his logical comprehension.

Still walking as if drawn forward half against his will, the doctor descended the stairs to the big living-room. At the stair-foot stood Peter Grimm, with outstretched hands to receive him.

"Well, Andrew," said the Dead Man, in the tone of banter that had never in life failed to "get a rise" out of his medical crony, "I apologise. You were right. I was mistaken. I didn't know what I was talking about. So I've come back, as I promised, to keep our compact and to apologise. You see, I——"

"Well, Doctor," asked Kathrien, looking back into the room at sound of McPherson's steps, "how is Willem?"

"Better," answered McPherson. "He's dropped off to sleep again. I'm still a bit puzzled about his case. It's——"

"Andrew! Andrew!" interrupted the Dead Man, almost fiercely. "I've got a message to deliver, but I can't get it across. This sort of thing is your own beloved specialty. Now's your chance. The chance you've always been longing for. Tell her I don't want her to marry Frederik! Tell her I——"

"A puzzling condition," continued McPherson, unhearing. "I can't quite grasp the meaning——"

"What meaning?" demanded Peter Grimm. "Mine? Try again. Tell her I don't want her to——"

"But," went on McPherson, drawing out pad and fountain pen, "I'll leave this prescription for one of the gardeners to take over to the druggist's. I'll leave it as I go out. I'll be back in—Why, what's up, Kathrien? What has happened? Oh, you've thought it over, eh? That's good. That's the way it should be. I left you all tears and now I find you all smiles. It——"

"Yes," answered Kathrien, half ashamed at her own oddly changed spirits. "I am happier for some reason. Much, much happier than I've been for days and days. I've—I've had such a strange feeling this past few minutes!"

"Have, eh?" asked McPherson curiously. "H'm! So have I. It's in the air, I suppose. I've been as restless as a hungry mouse. Something, for instance, seemed to draw me downstairs here. I can't explain it."

"I can," exulted Peter Grimm. "I'm beginning to be felt!"

"Doctor," hesitated Kathrien, looking nervously about her into the dimmer corners of the lamplit room, "just a little while ago, I—I thought I heard Oom Peter call me.—I was upstairs in my room. And it seemed to me I could hear that dear old call he used to give. It was so vivid, so distinct, so real! It was my imagination, of course. I'm so used to hearing Oom Peter's voice in this room that sometimes I forget for a moment that he isn't here. But—but some one must have called me. I couldn't have imagined it all. Isn't it strange to hear a call like that and then look around and find no one is there?"

"It is a phenomenon well recognised in modern science," affirmed McPherson. "I could cite you a hundred instances of it. Not all from imaginative persons either, Kathrien!" he added solemnly. "I have the firm conviction that in a very short time I shall hear from Peter!"

"I hope so," sighed the Dead Man in whimsical despair.

"He made the compact I told you about," continued McPherson, "and Peter Grimm never broke his word. He will come back. Be sure of that. But what I want is some positive proof,—some absolute test to prove his presence when he comes. Poor old Peter! Bless his kind, obstinate heart! If he keeps that compact with me and comes back, do you know what I shall ask him first?"

"You poor, blind, deaf, old Scotchman!" laughed Peter Grimm. "Open your eyes and your ears! You are like the man who lay down at the edge of the river and died of thirst."

"What would you ask him first, Doctor?" queried the girl as McPherson paused with dramatic effect, awaiting the question.

"First of all," said the doctor, "I shall ask him: 'Peter, in the next world does our work go on just where we left it off here?'"

"Well," returned Peter Grimm thoughtfully, "that question is rather a poser, isn't it?"

"It is a difficult question to answer, I admit," mused McPherson, following what he deemed to be the trend of his own thoughts. "I realise that."

"You heard me?" cried the Dead Man, with sudden excitement. "You heard? Come! We're getting results at last, you and I!"

"Results," murmured the doctor abstractedly, "are——What was I saying? Oh, yes. In the life-to-come, for instance, am I to be a bone-setter and is he to keep on being a tulip man?"

"It stands to reason, Andrew, doesn't it?" suggested Peter Grimm. "What chance would a beginner have with a fellow who knew his business before he was born? Hey?"

With the merrily victorious air that he had ever assumed when he had scored a telling point in their old-time discussions, Peter surveyed the doctor.

"I believe, Katje," mused McPherson after a moment's consideration, "that it is possible to have more than one chance at our life work. It never occurred to me before, but——"

"There!" exclaimed the Dead Man. "You caught that! Now, why can't you get that message about Kathrien's marriage? Try, man! Try!"

"Kathrien," said McPherson, suddenly shifting from conjecture to everyday conditions, "have you thought over what I said to you about this marriage with Frederik?"

"He did get it!" muttered Peter Grimm.

"Yes," rejoined Kathrien, "I have thought it over, Doctor. And I thank you with all my heart. But——"

"Well?"

"I shall go on with it. I shall be married, just as Oom Peter wished me to. I shan't go back on my promise."

McPherson growled in futile disgust.

"Don't give up, Andrew!" exhorted Peter Grimm. "Don't give up! Make her see it your way. A girl can always change her mind. Try again. Andrew!"

The last word was almost a cry. For McPherson, with a shrug of his shoulders, accepted defeat in surly silence and was tramping across to the hat rack, where he began to gather up his outdoor raiment.

"Oh, Andrew! Andrew!" he pleaded, following him up. "Don't throw away the fight so easily! Tell her to——"

"Good-bye, Kathrien," said the doctor at the threshold. "If you choose to make toad-pie of your life, it's no business of mine. I'll drop in later for a good-night look at Willem."

"Good-night, Doctor," answered Kathrien, "and—thank you again."

With a wordless grunt, McPherson went out, leaving Peter Grimm staring hopelessly after him.

"I see I can't depend on you, Andrew," murmured the Dead Man, "in spite of your psychic lore and your belief in my return. Why is it they can all understand—or half understand—the unimportant things I say, and yet be deaf to my message? It is like picking out the simple words in a foreign book and then not know what the story is about. Marta—Kathrien—McPherson—they all fail me. I must find some other way."

He turned slowly toward the door of the office. The door almost immediately opened and James Hartmann came into the room. The young man had a pen behind his ear and a half-written memorandum of sales in his hand. He had evidently risen from his work and entered the living-room on an unplanned impulse.

Kathrien had seated herself in a chair by the fire and was gazing drearily into the red embers.

"Look at her, lad!" breathed Peter Grimm. "She is so pretty—so young—so lonely! Look! There are kisses tangled in that gold hair of hers where it curls about her forehead and neck. Hundreds of them. And her lips are made for kisses. See how dainty and sweet and heart-broken she is. She is dreaming of you, James. Are you going to let her go? Why, who could resist such a girl? You're not going to let her go! You feel what I am saying to you. You won't give her up. She loves you, boy. And you realise now that you can't live without her. Speak! Speak to her!"

"Miss Kathrien!" said Hartmann earnestly; then halted, frightened at his own temerity.

The girl looked up quickly. At sight of him she flushed and rose impulsively to face him.

"Oh, James!" she cried. "I'm so glad—so glad to see you!"

As their hands met the man's hesitancy fled.

"I felt that you were in here," said he. "All at once I seemed to know you were here and alone. And before I realised what I was doing, I came in. I didn't mean to."

"Didn't mean to come and see me while you were here?" she echoed in reproach. "Why not?"

"For the same reason I didn't stay when I was here before. I——"

"Why did you go away that time?" she demanded. "Why did you go without a word of good-bye to—to any of us?"

"Tell her, boy," adjured Peter Grimm. "Don't mind my feelings."

"Your uncle sent me away," blurted Hartmann, "but it was partly at my own request."

"Oom Peter sent you away? Why?"

"I told him the truth again."

"Oh! One of your usual hot arguments that used to worry me so? I remember how excited you both used to get. Was it about the superiority of potatoes to orchids this time?"

"No. The superiority of one person to the whole world."

But she did not catch his meaning. She was looking up at the big athletic body and the clean, strong face, with an absurd longing to creep into the man's arms for shelter as might a tired child.

"It's so good to see you back," she said.

"I'm only here for a few hours," he answered. "Just long enough to put one or two details of the business to rights. Then I'm going away again—this time for good."

"No! Where are you going?"

"Father and I are going to try our luck on our own account. I've a few thousands from a legacy that came to me last month from my grandmother. And father has saved a tidy little sum, too. We're going to start in with small fruits and market gardening. We haven't decided just where."

"It will be so strange—so different—so lonely and empty when I come back," she mourned, "with Uncle and you both gone. It seems as if the blessed old home was all broken up. It can never be the same again. I don't know how I can muster courage to come into this house after——"

"It will be easier after the first wrench. Everything is easier than we think it's going to be. And, Kathrien," he went on, steadying his voice by a supreme effort, "I hope you'll be happy—beautifully happy."

Neither of them realised that her hand had somehow slipped into his and was resting very contentedly in the big, firm grasp.

"Whether I'm happy or not," replied Kathrien miserably, "it's the only thing to do. Please try to believe that. Oh, James, he died smiling at me—thinking of me—loving me. And just before he went he had begged me to marry Frederik. I shall never forget the wonderful look of happiness in his eyes when I promised. It was all he wanted in life. He said he'd never been so happy before. He smiled up at me for the very last time, with his dear face all alight. And there he sat, smiling, after he was gone. The smile of a man leaving this life absolutely satisfied—at peace!"

"I know. Marta told me. I——"

"It's like a hand on my heart, hurting it almost unbearably when I question doing anything he wanted. It has always been so with me ever since I was a baby. I never could bear to go against his wishes. And now that he's gone—why, I must keep my word. I couldn't meet him in the Hereafter if I didn't keep that last sacred promise to him. I couldn't say my prayers at night. I couldn't speak his name in them. Oom Peter trusted me. He depended on me. He did everything for me. I must do this for him."

"No, no!" exclaimed the Dead Man. "You are wrong. Tell her so, James!"

"I wanted you to know this, James," finished Kathrien, "because—because——"

A gush of tears blotted out Hartmann's tense, wretched face and choked her hesitating utterance.

"Have you told Frederik that you don't love him?" asked Hartmann, forcing himself to resist the yearning to gather her into his arms and kiss away her tears. "Does he know?"

She nodded, her face buried in her hands.

"And Frederik is willing to take you like that? On those terms?"

Another dumb nod of the pretty, fluffy little head, with its face still convulsed and hidden.

"The yellow dog!" burst forth Hartmann.

"You flatter him," sadly assented Peter Grimm.

"Look here, Kathrien," hurried on Hartmann, "I didn't mean to say a word of this to-day,—or ever. Not a word. But the instant I came in here from the office just now, something made me change my mind. I knew all at once I must talk to you. You looked so little, so young, so helpless, all huddled up there by the fire. Kathrien, you've never had to think for yourself. You don't know what you are doing in going on with this blasphemous, loveless marriage. Why, dear, you are making the most terrible mistake possible to a woman. Marriage with love is often a tragedy. Without love it is a hell. A horror that will deepen and grow more dreadful with every year."

"Do you suppose I don't understand that?" she whispered. "Don't make it harder for me."

"Your uncle was wrong to ask such a sacrifice. Why should you wreck your life to carry out his pig-headed plans?"

"Oh!"

"Not strong enough yet," advised Peter Grimm. "Go on, lad."

"You are going to be wretched for the rest of your days, just to please a dead man who can't even know about it," insisted Hartmann. "Or if he does know, you may be certain he sees the affair more sanely by this time and is bitterly sorry he made you promise."

"He assuredly is," acquiesced Peter Grimm. "I wish I'd known in other days that you had so much sense. Go ahead!"

"You mustn't speak so, James," reproved Kathrien, deeply shocked. "I——"

"Yes, he must," contradicted the Dead Man. "Go on, James. Stronger!"

"But I must speak so!" declared Hartmann, swept on by a power he could not understand. "I'll speak my mind. I don't care how fond you were of your uncle or how much he did for you. It was not right for him to ask this sacrifice of you. The whole thing was the blunder of an obstinate old man!"

"No! You mustn't!"

"I loved him, too," said Hartmann. "As much in my own way, perhaps, as you did. Though he and I never agreed on any subject under the sun. But, in spite of all my affection for him, I know and always knew he was an obstinate old man. Obstinate as a mule. It was the Dutch in him, I suppose."

Peter Grimm nodded emphatic approval.

"Do you know why I was sent away?" rushed on Hartmann, still upheld and goaded along by that incomprehensible impulse. "Do you know why I quarrelled with your uncle?"

"No."

"Because I told him I loved you. He asked me. I didn't tell him because I had any hopes. I hadn't. I haven't now. Oh, girl, I don't know why I'm talking to you like this. I love you. And my arms are aching for you."

He stepped toward her, arms out as he spoke. She retreated, frightened, to where Peter Grimm stood surveying the lover with keen approbation.

"No, no!" she warned. "You mustn't, James. It isn't right—don't."

Her next backward step brought her close to Peter Grimm. And the Dead Man, with a swift motion of his hand, waved her forward into her lover's outstretched arms.

Through no conscious volition of her own, Kathrien sped straight onward, unswerving, unfaltering into the strong circle of those arms for whose warm refuge she had so guiltily felt herself longing.

"No!" she panted, in dutiful resistance.

But the negation was lost against Hartmann's broad breast as he pressed her closely to him.

"I love you!" he repeated over and over in a daze of rapture.

Then in awed wonder:

"And you love me, Kathrien!"

"No, no—don't make me say it, dear heart!"

"I shall make you say it. It is true. You do love me!"

"What matter if I do?" wailed the girl. "It wouldn't change matters."

"Kathrien!"

"Please don't say anything more. I can't bear it."

Gently, reluctantly, she sought to release herself from that wonderful embrace. But Hartmann now needed no Spirit Guest to urge him to hold his own.

"I'm not going to let you go," he cried, kissing her white, upturned face till the red glowed back into it. "I won't give you up, Kathrien. I won't give you up!"

"You must," she insisted, struggling more fiercely against herself than against him. "You must, dear. I can't break my promise to Oom Peter. I——"

The front door opened. The lovers sprang apart. Frederik entered, glancing quickly from one to the other of them.

"Oh!" he observed. "You in here, Hartmann? I thought I'd find you in the office. I've some unopened mail of my uncle's to glance over. Then I'll join you there."

Hartmann took the broad hint, nodded, and left the room. Frederik's eyes followed him steadily until the door closed behind the young intruder. Then he turned to where Kathrien crouched, panting, bewildered, trembling. Frederik abruptly went over to her, and, before she could guess his purpose, kissed her full on the lips.

Involuntarily the girl recoiled as from some loathly thing.

"Don't!" she exclaimed, fighting for her shaken self-control. "Please don't!"

"Why not?" he snapped.

She did not answer.

"Has Hartmann been talking to you?"

She moved toward the stair-foot.

"Just a moment, please," Frederik interposed, hurrying forward to catch up with her before she could gain the safety of the stairway.

"Hartmann has been talking to you. What has he been saying?"

He had seized her hand as she made to mount the stairway. As she did not reply to his question, he repeated it, adding:

"Do you really imagine, Kathrien, that you care for that—fellow?"

"I'd rather not talk about it, please, Frederik," she pleaded.

"No? But it is necessary. Do you——"

She broke away from his suddenly rough grip and fled up the stairway to her own room. As the door shut behind her, Frederik, with clouded face and working lips, strode over to the desk. He passed close by Peter Grimm. But the Dead Man was still staring blankly after Kathrien.

"Oh, Katje," he muttered, "even Love could not get my message to you! Less influence would be needed to change the fate of a nation than the mind of one good woman. I think a good woman—a good woman,—is more stubborn than anything else in the Universe. Not excepting myself. When she has made up her mind to do right,—which invariably means to sacrifice herself and thereby make as many other people wretched as possible—not even a Spirit from the Other World can influence her."

With a despairing shrug of the shoulders he turned toward his nephew, and his face hardened. Frederik had seated himself at the desk. He had drawn out the little handful of personal letters that had arrived that afternoon for Peter Grimm and those that Mrs. Batholommey had put into the drawer for safe keeping.

One letter after another Frederik cut open, glanced over, and either put back into the drawer or laid under a paperweight on the desk. Peter Grimm crossed to the opposite side of the desk and stood looking down at him with set face and sad, reproving gaze.

"Frederik Grimm," said the Dead Man at last, his voice low but infinitely impressive, "my beloved nephew! You sit there opening my mail with the heart of a stone. You are saying to yourself: 'He is gone; there will be fine times ahead.' But there is one thing you have forgotten, Frederik: The Law of Reward and Punishment. Your hour has come—to think!"

Frederik, unheeding, continued to open, read, and sort the letters before him.

At the Dead Man's last words, his nephew picked from the heap a blue envelope, ripped it open, and pulled out the enclosures:—a single sheet of blue paper and a cheap photograph.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" he babbled over and over, foolishly, staring from letter to photograph. "Here's luck! What luck it is! Anne Marie to my uncle! Lord! If he'd lived to read it! If he had read it! Out I'd have been kicked! One—two—three—Augenblick! Out into the street! Oh, what unbelievable luck! If she'd written to him ten days earlier! Ten little days!"

His hand shaking, he picked up the letter again, spread it wide, and began to read it, Peter Grimm standing behind him, looking over the reader's shoulder.

"Dear Mr. Grimm," the letter ran, "I have not written because I can't help Willem. And I am ashamed. Don't be too hard upon me, sir, in your thoughts. At first I often went hungry. And then the few pennies I had saved for him were spent. Now I see that I can never hope to get him back. Willem is far better off with you. I know he is. But, oh, how I wish I could just see him again! Once. Perhaps I could come there in the night time and no one would know——"

"Oh!" breathed Peter Grimm, between tight clenched teeth. "The pity of it! The pity of it!"

"Who's that?" cried Frederik, looking up with a start of terror from his perusal of the letter.

The young man peered about the shadows beyond the radius of the lamp, a nervous dread at his heart.

"Who's in the room!" he demanded, glancing behind him.



Then with a self-contemptuous shake of his head he muttered angrily:

"That's queer. I could have sworn somebody was looking over my shoulder. Bah! My nerves are going bad!"

He returned to the reading of the letter.

"I met some one from home to-day," went on Anne Marie's epistle. "If there's any truth in the rumour that Kathrien is going to marry Frederik, it mustn't be, Mr. Grimm. It must not. She must not marry him. For Frederik is my little boy's fa——"

"There is some one here!" muttered Frederik, laying down the letter.

Calming his disordered nerves once more, he glanced furtively up toward Willem's room in the bedroom gallery above his head. Then he picked up the photograph and looked at it long with eyes full of trouble and apprehension. It was the full-length cabinet likeness of a plainly dressed young woman with a pretty, slack face. And the face's weakness was half redeemed by a stamp of settled sadness that was not devoid of a certain dignity.

Frederik turned the photograph over. On the back he read:

"For my little boy, from Anne Marie."

His mouth twitched. Throngs of memories were crowding in upon him. And the eyes of the Dead Man were boring to his very soul. Something very like Conscience was stirring within him. He laid the photograph face downward on the table and he bent his head forward upon his hands.

The young man was not a melodrama villain. He was not even a scoundrel, in the broad sense of the term. Weak, lazy, pleasure loving, he was what Peter Grimm had all unconsciously made him. As a dilettante, a man of leisure, or even comfortably engaged in some easy, congenial life work and with pleasant home surroundings, he would probably have developed few undesirable traits.

From boyhood he had been under the influence and orders of Peter Grimm. To be under Peter Grimm's supervision entailed one of three courses, according to the character of the person concerned: either to yield gracefully and gratefully to the old man's kindly but iron domination and find therein love and protection,—as had Kathrien; or to use the right of personal thought and individuality, and therefore to clash forever with Peter,—as had James Hartmann; or to seem for policy's sake to bend, while really living one's own life;—as had Frederik.

Peter Grimm was the slave and apostle of Order, Work, and Method. Frederik loved ease, luxury, artistic surroundings. Yet he was too wise to antagonise his uncle, who had the power to leave him one day the master of all these pleasant things he craved. So he had adapted himself outwardly to a path he loathed. And, by the wayside, he had secretly sought such pleasures as his nature craved.

Anne Marie had chanced to be by the wayside.

What had followed was rendered tragic chiefly by Anne Marie's innate goodness and by Peter Grimm's fierce morality.

Frederik dared not risk the loss of a future fortune by admitting his fault or by marrying the woman for whom, at the time, he had really cared. In a shiftless way and with straitly limited income, he had done what he could do for her. The sacrifices these helps had entailed and the constant fear of exposure and of consequent disinheritance had in time made the thought of Anne Marie a horror to him.

When he had gone, at Peter Grimm's command, to Leyden and Heidelberg to study botany, Frederik had hoped to close the unsavoury incident for all time.

On his return he had found Willem installed at the Grimm home, a living, ever-present menace and reminder to him. And, despite a soft heart and a normally decent nature, Frederik had, little by little, been forced by his own past and his own hopes into a course that at times was hateful to him. Ten thousand men, far worse than he, walk the streets of every big city and sleep snug o' nights with no grinning Conscience-Skull to break their rest. A thousand well-meaning, harmless sons of dominating and domineering parents are forced, as was he, into by-roads as hateful to them. To be cast by Fate to enact the Villain, when one has not the temperament, the aptitude, nor the desire for the unsavoury role, falls to more men's lot than the world realises.

It had fallen to Frederik Grimm's. Wherefore, sick at heart, he sat with his head in his hands. And Peter Grimm read his thoughts as from a printed page.

"Once more a spark of manhood is alight in your soul," whispered the Dead Man. "It is not too late. Nothing is ever too late. Turn back!"

Frederik looked up, half-listening. His hand crept out to the letter.

"Follow the impulse that is in your heart," begged the Dead Man. "Follow it! Take the little boy in your arms. Declare him to all the world as your own. Go down on your knees and ask his mother's forgiveness. Ah, do it, lad, so that I can go back still trusting you,—still believing in you,—blessing you! Frederik!"

"Yes," answered Frederik, starting up. "What is it?"

He glanced about the room unseeingly, then looked toward the outer door and called:

"Come in!"

"That's curious!" he mused, settling back in his chair. "I thought I heard some one at—Who's at the door?" he called again.

"I am at the door," replied the Dead Man in solemn vehemence. "I, Peter Grimm. The uncle who loved you and whom you tricked. Anne Marie is at the door,—the little girl who is ashamed to come home. Willem is at the door—your own flesh and blood—nameless! Katje, sobbing her heart out,—James—all of us. All! We are all at the door, Frederik! At the door of your conscience. Ah, don't keep us waiting!"



CHAPTER XV

A HALF-HEARD MESSAGE

Frederik rose slowly from his chair. His face was working. Instinctively his glance lifted to Kathrien's door. His eyes grew bright and his weak mouth strong with a wondrous resolve. He crossed the room to the stair-foot; that light of pure sacrifice deepening in his whole upraised face.

"Yes!" urged the Dead Man, keeping eager pace with him in body and in thought. "Yes! Call her. Give her back her promise."

The flabby muscles of a self-indulgent man may sometimes perform a single prodigious feat of strength. Wherein they have an infinite advantage over the far flabbier resolutions of a self-indulgent man. And Frederik Grimm's weak, atrophied better self was not equal to the strain thrown upon it.

At the stair-foot, his step faltered. He halted irresolutely, while the Dead Man watched him in an anguish of hope and fear.

Then came surrender to long habit; and with it a gush of weak rage. Not at himself. He had not the strength left for that. But at the cause of his distress. He brought down his fist upon the desk with a resounding thwack. His eye fell on the open page with its pathetic scrawl of appeal.

"Damn her!" he growled, snatching up the letter and tearing it across and across. "I wish to God I'd never seen her!"

Peter Grimm gazed down upon him with eyes wherein lurked a slowly rising fire.

"Frederik Grimm!" commanded the Dead Man. "Get up! Stand up before me! Stand up, I say!"

Frederik made as though to rise, then swore under his breath and sat down again.

"Stand up!" flashed the Dead Man.

Frederik got shamblingly to his feet, and looked around with a frown, as though wondering why he had risen. His gaze swept the desk for some cause for his action, then rested moodily on the dying embers in the hearth.

The Dead Man at the far side of the desk confronted him like some unearthly Judge from whose heart pity, humanity, and all else but righteous wrath were banished.

"You shall not have my little girl!" thundered Peter Grimm. "I have come back to take her away from you. And you cannot put me to rest. I have come back. You cannot drive me from your thoughts."

He touched Frederik's damp forehead with his forefinger.

"I am there," he said. "I am looking over your shoulder as you read or write or think. I am looking in at the window when you deem you are alone and unseen. I have come back. You are breathing me in the air. I am hammering at your heart in each of your pulse beats. Wherever you are, I am there."

His forced calmness gave way to a gust of helpless rage as he felt his words falling upon world-deafened ears.

"Hear me!" he commanded furiously. "Hear me! You shall hear me!"

At each frenzied repetition of the command, the Dead Man hurled his arms aloft and brought down his clenched fist with all his power upon the desk in mighty blows of utterly soundless violence.

Impotently he cried aloud:

"Oh, will no one hear me? Has my journey been all in vain? Has it been useless?—worse than useless?"

The Dead Man looked upward, in an anguish of desperation. He seemed to be entreating the Unseen in his clamour of wild, hopeless appeal.

"Has it all been for nothing?" he wailed. "Must we forever stand or fall by the mistakes we make in this world? Is there no second chance?"

Frederik shook his head angrily as though to banish clinging unwelcome thoughts from his brain, got up and crossed to the sideboard, where he poured himself a double drink of liquor and swigged it down with feverish eagerness.

As he left the desk, Marta entered from the kitchen with the light supper he had ordered:—coffee, with sugar and cream, and a plate of little cakes. She went to the desk and began clearing a space among the scattered papers for the supper tray. As her free hand moved among the papers, the Dead Man was at her elbow.

"Marta!" he whispered, as though fearing his words might reach Frederik. "Look! Look!"

He pointed excitedly to the torn letter and the photograph that lay face downward under her hand. And she picked up both letter and picture, to make room for the tray.

"Marta!" urged the Dead Man, almost incoherent in his wild haste. "See what you have there! Look down at that picture in your hand! Turn it over and look at it! Look at the hand-writing on that torn letter! Look quickly! Then run with them to Miss Kathrien. Make her piece the letter together and read it! Quick! It's the only way she can learn the truth. Frederik will never tell her. Marta!—Ah!"

His wild plea broke off in a cry of chagrin. For Frederik, turning from the sideboard, had seen the old woman.

"Your coffee, Mynheer Frederik," said she, laying down the photograph and letter without a glance at them.

"Yes, yes. Of course," answered Frederik. "I forgot. Thanks."

She turned to leave the room. Frederik, coming over to the desk, caught sight of the torn blue envelope and the picture, where she had laid them.

Hurriedly covering them with his hand, he glanced at her in quick, terrified suspicion. But the face she turned to him as she hesitated for a moment at the kitchen door showed him at once that he was safe. Nevertheless, Marta lingered on the threshold.

"Well?" queried Frederik, seating himself beside the tray.

"Is there," she stammered, "is there no—no word—no letter——?"

"Word? Letter?" he echoed nervously. "What do you mean?"

"From——" began the old woman in timid hesitation, then in a rush of courage: "From my little girl. From Anne Marie."

"No!" he snapped. "Of course not. I——"

"But—at a time like this—if she knows—oh, I felt it,—I hoped—that there would be some message from her! Every day I have hoped——"

"No," he broke in. "Nothing's come. No letter. No word of any sort from her. I'd have let you know if there had. By the way, I have an appointment at the hotel in a few minutes. Tell Miss Kathrien, if she asks for me."

He busied himself with the tray. Marta looked at him a moment longer, held by some power that she could not explain. Then years of habit overcame impulse. She courtesied and withdrew to her kitchen.

As the door shut behind her, Frederik caught up the torn blue letter. Tossing it in a metal ash tray he struck a match. Peter Grimm, divining his intent, sprang forward with a wordless cry to stop him. The Dead Man's hands tore at the wrists of the Living; sought by main strength to snatch the paper out of his reach; with pitiful helplessness tried to thrust back the hand that held the lighted match.

Unknowingly, Frederik touched the flame to the paper, shook out the match, and watched the torn letter blaze and curl. Then he tossed the charred bits into a jardiniere on the floor, and picked up the picture.

"There's an end to that!" he murmured, turning to throw the photograph into the smoking embers of the fireplace.

Peter Grimm stood erect. A new hope drove the sick despair from his face. Looking toward Willem's room he raised his arm and beckoned.

At once the door stealthily opened. A white little figure slipped out onto the gallery and toward the stairs. Down the flight of steps, clad in his white flannel pajama suit, his eyes wide, his yellow hair tumbled, Willem ran.

Frederik, in the act of consigning the photograph to the fire, was arrested by the sound of pattering feet. Laying the picture on the desk, he turned guiltily, in time to see Willem speeding across the room toward the bay window.

"What are you doing down here?" demanded Frederik. "If you're so sick, you ought not to get out of bed. That's the place for sick boys."

"The circus!" mumbled Willem in the queer, strained voice of a sleep walker. "The circus music waked me up. So I had to come and hear it."

"Circus music?" repeated Frederik amazedly, as he watched the boy tugging at the rain-tightened window sash to force it upward.

"Yes, it woke me. I can see the parade if I can get this window open. It——"

"Why, you're half asleep!" exclaimed Frederik. "The circus left town ten days ago!"

"No, no!" insisted Willem, raising the window with one final wrench of his frail arms. "The band's playing now. Hear it?"

A gust of chilly, wet air dashed in through the open window, sending a sharp draught across the room and waking the boy wide as it beat into his hot face.

"Why," babbled Willem, rubbing his eyes, and staring about him, "why, it's night time! I wonder what made me think the circus was here. I—I guess it was a dream."

Frederik strode to the window impatiently and slammed it shut. As he passed Willem on the way back to the desk the boy intuitively cowered away from him.

"You've had a fever," said Frederik crossly, "and you're liable to catch cold, wandering around this draughty old barn in your night clothes. Go back to bed."

"Yes, sir," whimpered the boy, cringing under the sharp tone and starting back for the stairs. But, before he reached the lowest step, he halted. Peter Grimm stood barring his way. For a moment the Dead Man and the child stood face to face. Then, still frightened but unable to resist, Willem turned back toward Frederik, who had just picked up the photograph once more; to put it in the smouldering ashes.

"Mynheer Frederik," asked the boy in a voice not his own, "where is Anne Marie?"

"What?" barked Frederik with an uncontrollable start and whipping the photograph around behind his back like a guilty child caught in theft. "What's that? Anne Marie? Why do you ask me about her? How should I know?"

He turned his back on the boy and began to tear the photograph into tiny bits. Willem hesitated, then went back to the stairway. Again at the foot of the steps he confronted the Dead Man. Again they stood for an instant, looking wordlessly into each other's eyes. And again Willem turned back into the room.

"Mynheer Frederik," he asked in a sort of dazed bewilderment, "where is Mynheer Grimm?"

"Eh? Mynheer Grimm? Dead, of course. Dead."

"Are—are you sure? Because just now——"

"Oh, go to bed! At once, do you hear! Go, or I'll have you punished!"

Under this dire threat and the scowl that went with it, not even the Dead Man's power could stem Willem's defeat. Up the stairs he scuttled. At the door of his room, the fever thirst in his hot, parched throat for the moment overcame fear.

"Could—could I have a drink of water?" he whimpered, gazing longingly down at the full ice-water pitcher on the sideboard.

An angry glance from Frederik sent him into his own room like a rabbit into its warren.

Frederik, the fragments of the picture clenched in his sweat-damp hand, glowered after the retreating lad and took a step toward the fire. The movement brought him close to the desk. The lamp had suddenly burned very low. But for the faint gleam of firelight the room was in almost total darkness.

And out of that gloom leaped a Face. A Face close to Frederik's own;—a Face indescribably awful in its aspect of unearthly menace. The face of Peter Grimm. Not kindly and rugged as in life, or even as since the Dead Man's return. But terrible, accusing, bathed in a lurid glow.

Frederik, with a scream of crass horror, reeled back. The bits of cardboard tumbled from his fear-loosened grip and strewed the surface of the desk.

"My God!" croaked Frederik, his throat sanded with terror. "My God! Oh, my God!"

The Face was gone. The room was in shadow again and very silent. The dropping of a charred ember from andiron to hearth made the panic-stricken man jump convulsively.

Scarce breathing, crouched in a position of grotesque fright, the fear-sweat streaming down his face, Frederik Grimm peered about him through the flickering gloom. The place seemed peopled with elusive Shapes. His teeth clicked together as his loosened jaw was nerve-racked. He shivered from head to foot.

"I—I thought——" he began, half aloud.

Then he fell silent, afraid of his own voice in that dreadful silence. For a moment he cowered, numb, inert. Then he remembered the fragments of the photograph that still strewed the table.

"I must get rid of them," he thought.

He took an apprehensive step toward the desk. But the memory of what he had seen there was too potent. He knew he could no more approach that spot than he could walk into a den of rattlesnakes. He halted, sweating, aghast. Again he crept forward,—a step—two steps—in the direction of the torn picture. But his fears clogged his feet and brought him to a shivering stand-still. Had the wealth of the world lain strewed on that desk instead of a mere handful of scattered pasteboard bits he could not have summoned courage to step forth and seize it.

The Dead Man, in the shadows, read his mind and smiled.

"No one's likely to come in here till I get back," Frederik told himself, in self-excuse for his cowardice. "And if any one does, the picture is too badly torn to be recognised. I——"

He found that his terror-ridden subconsciousness was backing his trembling body toward the outer door. The door that led from that haunted room—from the desk he dared not go near,—out into the safe, peace-giving night of summer.

And, snatching up his hat and stick, the shuddering, white-faced young master of the Grimm fortune half-stumbled, half-ran, from his home.

"Hicks's lawyer will be waiting," he said to his battered self-respect. "I'm late as it is. I must hurry."

And hurry he did, nor checked his rapid pace until he had reached his destination.

Scarce had the door banged shut after Frederik when Peter Grimm raised his eyes once more toward Willem's room. And again the little white-clad figure appeared, and tiptoed toward the stair head.

Willem paused a moment, looked over the banisters to make certain that Frederik had gone, then stole down to the big living-room. His cheeks were flushed with fever. He was tired all over. His head throbbed. And his throat was unbearably dry. The perpetual thirst of childhood, augmented by the gnawing, unbearable thirst of fever, sent him speeding to the sideboard. He picked up the big ice-water pitcher,—chilled and frosted by inner cold and outer dampness—and poured out a glassful of the stingingly cold water. The boy gulped down the contents of the glass in almost a single draught. Then he filled a second glass and, with epicurean delight, let the water trickle slowly and coolingly down his hot throat. Peter Grimm stood beside him, a gentle hand on the thin little shoulder. His thirst slaked, Willem glanced fearfully toward the front door.

"Oh, he won't come back for a long time," Peter Grimm soothed him. "Don't be afraid. He went out in a hurry and he hasn't yet stopped hurrying. He—thought he saw me."

Willem, reassured, laid his burning cheek against the frosted, icy side of the pitcher. A smile of utter bliss overspread his face.

"My, but it feels good!" sighed the boy.

The Dead Man continued to look down at him with an infinite pity.

"Willem," said he, stroking the tousled head and smoothing away its stabbing pain, "there are some little soldiers in this world who are handicapped when they come into Life's battlefield. Their parents haven't fitted them for the fight. Poor little moon-moths! They look in at the lighted windows. They beat at the panes. They see the glow of happy firesides,—the lamps of bright homes. But they can never get in. You are one of those little wanderers, Willem. And children like you are a million times happier when they are spared the truth. So it's the most beautiful thing that can happen for you, that before your playing time is over—before you begin a man's bitterly hard, grinding toil,—all the care—all the tears, all the worries, all the sorrows are going to pass you by forever. God is going to lay His dear hand on your head. There is always a place for such little children as you at His side. There is none in this small, harsh, unpitying old world. If people knew—if they understood—I don't think they could be so cruel as to bring such children into the world, to carry terrible burdens. They don't know. But God does. And that is why He is going to take you to Him. It will be the most wonderful—the most beautiful thing that could happen to you."

Willem smiled dreamily. Then he took a long, ecstatic drink out of the pitcher itself, set it down, and rose to his feet. He felt suddenly better. For the time the water had cooled him. The racking headache was smoothed away. And, child-like, he had no desire whatever to cut short his surreptitious good time by going to bed. He looked about him for new objects of interest.

"Willem," went on the Dead Man, "of all this whole household, you are the only one who really feels I am here. The only one who can almost see me. The only one who can help me. I have a little message for you to give Katje, and I've something to show you."

He pointed toward the desk, where lay the fragments of the picture. The firelight was strong enough now to make them plainly visible. Willem's eyes followed the direction of the pointing hand. But his glance, as it reached the desk, fell upon something infinitely more attractive than any mere photograph. He saw the tray placed there by Marta and left untouched by Frederik.

"I'm awful hungry!" observed the boy.

"H'm!" commented Peter Grimm, as Willem started across the room to investigate the mysteriously alluring tray. "I see I can't get any help from a youngster as long as his stomach is calling."

"Good!" ejaculated Willem as he spied the plate of cakes.

"Help yourself!" invited Peter Grimm.

The boy obeyed the suggestion before it was made. Already his mouth was full of cake and his jaws were working rapturously.

"Das is lecker!" he murmured, biting into another of the cakes.

He picked a large and obese raisin from a third, swallowed it, then reached for the sugar bowl. Two lumps of sugar went the way of the raisin. After which a handful of sugar lumps were stuffed into his night-clothes' pocket for future delectation in bed. The cream pitcher next met the forager's eye. Willem looked at it longingly.

"Take it," said Peter Grimm. "It's good, thick, sweet cream. Drink it down. That's right. It won't hurt you. Nothing can hurt you now."

"I haven't had such a good time," Willem confided to his inner consciousness, "since Mynheer Grimm died. Why"—he broke off, his roving gaze concentrating on the hat-rack—"there's his hat! It's—he's here! Oh, Mynheer Grimm!" he wailed aloud in utter longing. "Take me back with you!"

"You know I'm here?" asked the Dead Man joyously. "Can you see me?"

"No, sir," came the answer without a breath of hesitation or any hint of misunderstanding.

"Here," ordered Peter Grimm, his face alight, "take my hand. Have you got it?"

He placed his right hand around the boy's groping palm.

"No, sir," replied Willem.

"Now," urged Peter Grimm, enclosing the boy's hand in both his own, "do you feel it?"

"I—I feel something," returned Willem, in doubt. "Yes, sir. But where is your hand? There's—there's nothing there!"

"But you hear me?" asked the Dead Man anxiously.

"I—I can't really hear you. It's some kind of a dream, I suppose. Isn't it? Oh, Mynheer Grimm!" he pleaded brokenly. "Take me back with you!"

"You're not quite ready to go with me, yet," said the Dead Man in gentle denial. "Not till you can see me."

The boy reached out for another cake. Still looking straight ahead where he imagined his unseen protector might be, he asked:

"What did you come back for, Mynheer Grimm? Wasn't it nice where you went?"

"Oh, yes! Beyond all belief, dear lad. But I had to come back. Willem, do you think you could take a message for me? Listen very carefully now. Because I want you to remember every word of it. I want you to try to understand. You are to tell Miss Kathrien——"

"It's too bad you died before you could go to the circus, Mynheer Grimm," broke in Willem, munching the cake.

"Willem," persisted the Dead Man, patiently starting his plan of campaign all over again from another angle, "there must be a great many things you remember,—things that happened when you lived with your mother. Aren't there?"

"I was very little," hesitated Willem, echoing a phrase he had once heard Marta use in speaking of his earlier days.

"Still," pursued the Dead Man, "you remember?"

"I—I was afraid," replied the boy, groping back in the blurred past for a fact and seizing on a gruesomely prominent one.

"Try to think back to that time," urged Peter Grimm. "You loved—her?"

"Oh, I did love Anne Marie!" exclaimed the child.

"Now," pointed out the Dead Man, "through that one little miracle of love you can remember many things that are tucked away in the back of your baby brain. Hey? Things that a single spark could kindle and light up and make clear to you. It comes back? Think! There were you—and Anne Marie——"

"And the Other One," suggested Willem on impulse.

"So! And who was the 'Other One'?"

"I'm afraid——" babbled the child.

And again the Dead Man shifted the form of his questions to quiet the nervous dread that had sprung into the big eyes.

"Willem," said he, "what would you rather see than anything else in all this world? Think. Something that every little boy loves?"

"I—I like the circus," hazarded Willem, setting his tired wits to work at this possible conundrum, "and the clowns, and——"

He hesitated. Peter Grimm motioned toward the photograph's fragments on the desk.

"——and my mother," finished the boy.

Then, his gaze following the Dead Man's gesture, he caught sight of part of a pictured face, torn diagonally across. With a cry he picked it up.

"Why," he exclaimed, "there she is! There's her face,—part of it. And," fumbling among the torn bits of cardboard, "there's the other part. It's a picture of Anne Marie. All torn up."

"It would be fun to put it together," suggested Peter Grimm, "the way you did with those picture puzzles I got you once. Suppose we try?"

The idea caught the child's fancy. With knitted brows and puckered lips he bent over the desk and began the task of piecing the scraps into a whole.

"That's right," approved the Dead Man. "Put it all together until the picture is all perfect.—See, there's the bit you are looking for to finish off the shoulder,—and then we must show it to everybody in the house, and set them all to thinking."

With an apprehensive glance over his shoulder toward the front door Willem proceeded more hurriedly with his work of joining the strewn pieces.

"I must get it put together before he comes back," he muttered.

"Ah!" mutely rejoiced the Dean Man, "I'm making you think about him at last! I'll succeed in getting your mind to connect him with Anne Marie by the time the others——"

"'Uncle Rat has gone to town! Ha.-H'M!'"

chanted Willem under his breath as his fingers moved from part to part of the nearly completed picture. "'To buy his niece a wedding gown.'—There's her hand!" he interrupted himself as an elusive scrap of the photograph was at last discovered and put into place.

Peter Grimm's eyes were fixed on the door of Kathrien's room in a compelling stare.

"Her other hand!" mused Willem. "'What shall the wedding breakfast be? Ha-H'M! What shall the——?' Where's—here's the last two parts. There! It's done! Oh, Anne Marie! Mamma! I——"

The door of Kathrien's room opened. The girl, under a spell of the Dead Man's will, came out to the banisters.



CHAPTER XVI

THE "SENSITIVE"

Kathrien, looking down into the firelit room, saw the white-clad boy starting up in triumph with his work.

"Why, Willem!" she cried, dumfounded at sight of the invalid out of bed at such an hour. "What are you doing down there? You ought to——"

"Oh, Miss Kathrien!" exclaimed the child, pointing toward the picture. "Come down, quick!"

"You mustn't get out of bed like this when you're ill," gently reproved Kathrien. "I had a feeling that you weren't in your room. That is why I came out to look. Come——"

"But, look!" insisted Willem, pointing again at the picture puzzle he had so painstakingly pieced together. "Look, Miss Kathrien!"

"Come, dear!" admonished Kathrien. "You must not play down there. Wait a minute, and I'll make your bed again. It will be more comfortable for you if it's made over. Then you must come right upstairs."

She went to the sick room and set to work with deft speed rearranging the tumbled sheets and smoothing the rumpled pillows. Willem looked down at his disregarded picture and his lip trembled. He gazed about the room in the hope of seeing Peter Grimm. He strained his keen ears for sound of the Dead Man's gentle, comforting voice.

But Peter Grimm was looking fixedly toward the dining-room door. And in a moment it opened and Mrs. Batholommey bustled in.

"I thought I heard some one call," observed the rector's wife for the benefit of any one who might be in the half-lighted room.

Then, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she espied Willem.

"Why!" she cackled. "Of all things! You naughty, naughty child! You ought to be in bed and asleep!"

Willem shrank under the rebuke, but a touch of Peter Grimm's hand and a whispered word of encouragement braced him to reply:

"Old Mynheer Grimm's come back."

In the midst of her tirade Mrs. Batholommey stopped, open-mouthed. She stared at the boy in dismay. His face, as well as his voice, was unperturbed. He had stated merely what seemed to him a perfectly natural but very welcome truth. He had supposed she would be pleased, not petrified. He had told her the news in the hope of averting a scolding. But she did not seem to take it in the sense of his simple declaration. So he repeated it.

"Old Mynheer Grimm's come back, Mrs. Batholommey."

She gurgled wordlessly, then sputtered:

"What are you talking about, child? 'Old Mynheer Grimm,' as you call him, is dead. You know that."

"No, he isn't," stoutly contradicted Willem. "He's come back. He's in this room right now. At least," he added as he glanced about and could not feel the Dead Man's presence, "at least he was a minute ago. I know, because I've been talking to him."

"Absurd!"

"I've been talking to him. He was standing just where you are now."

Mrs. Batholommey instinctively started. In fact, despite her age and bulk and the fact that she was built for endurance rather than for speed, she jumped high into the air, with an incredible lightness and agility, and came to earth several feet away from the spot Willem had designated.

"At least," explained the boy, "he seemed to be about there. But he seemed to be everywhere."

Recovering her smashed self-poise, Mrs. Batholommey frowned with lofty majesty, tempered by womanly concern.

"You are feverish again," she said. "I hoped you were all over it. You're light-headed, you poor little fellow."

Kathrien, the bed being re-made, hurried downstairs to get Willem.

"His mind is wandering," said Mrs. Batholommey. "He imagines all sorts of ridiculous, impossible things."

Kathrien dropped into a chair by the fire and gathered the fragile little body into her lap.

"Yes," went on Mrs. Batholommey, "he is out of his head. I think I'll run over and get the doctor."

"You need not trouble to," said Peter Grimm. "I have sent for him. Though he doesn't know it. He is coming up the walk."

The Dead Man turned toward the front door, the old quizzical smile on his lips.

"Come in, Andrew," he said. "I'm going to give you one more chance at the theory you were wise enough to form and are not wise enough to practise."

Dr. McPherson entered.

"I thought I'd just drop in for a minute before bedtime," said he, "to see how Willem——"

"Oh, Doctor!" cried Mrs. Batholommey. "This is providential. I was just coming to get you. Here's Willem. We found he'd gotten out of bed and wandered down here. He is worse. Much worse. He's quite delirious."

"H'm!" commented Dr. McPherson, touching the child's face and then laying a finger on the fast, light pulse. "He doesn't look it. He has a slight fever again, but——"

"Oh, he said old Mr. Grimm was here!" bleated Mrs. Batholommey. "Here in this room with him."

"What?" gasped Kathrien.

But the doctor seemed to regard the statement as the most natural thing imaginable.

"In this room?" he repeated in a matter of fact tone. "Well, very possibly he is. There's nothing so remarkable about that, is there?"

"Nothing remarkable?" squealed Mrs. Batholommey; then, bridling, she scoffed: "Oh, of course. I forgot. You believe in——"

"In fact," pursued McPherson, getting under weigh with his pet idea, "you'll remember, both of you, that I told you he and I made a compact to——"

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Batholommey with a shudder. "That absurd, horrible 'compact' you told us about! It was positively blasphemous!"

But McPherson was looking speculatively down at Willem, and did not accept nor even hear the challenge to combat.

"I've sometimes had the idea," said he, "that the boy was a 'sensitive.' And this evening, I've been wondering——"

"No, you haven't, Andrew," denied Peter Grimm. "It's I who have been doing the 'wondering'; through that Scotch brain of yours. I'm making use of that Spiritualistic hobby of yours because you're too dense to hear me except through some rarer mortal's voice."

"——Wondering," continued the doctor, "whether—perhaps——"

"Yes," declared Peter Grimm, as McPherson hesitated, "the boy is a 'sensitive,' as you call it."

"I really believe," declared McPherson, his last doubts vanishing, "that Willem is a 'sensitive.' I'm certain of it. And——"

"A 'sensitive'?" queried Kathrien. "What's that?"

"Well," reflected the doctor, "it is rather hard to define in simple language. A 'sensitive' is what is sometimes known as a 'medium.' A human organism so constructed that it can be 'informed,' or 'controlled' (as the phrases go) by those who are—who have—er—who have—passed over."

He looked apologetically about as if to assure the possibly-present Peter Grimm that he had absolutely no intent of using so non-technical a word as "dead."

Peter Grimm acknowledged the compliment with a laugh.

"Oh, say it, Andrew! Say it!" he adjured. "There is no 'death' and there are no 'dead,' as this world understands the words. So one term is as good as another. 'Dead' or 'passed over.' It's all one. Neither phrase means anything. Don't be afraid of offending me."

"And Willem is like that?" asked Kathrien.

"I am sure of it," answered McPherson. "Now, Willem——"

"I think I'd better put the boy to bed!" hastily interposed Mrs. Batholommey, coming between the doctor and his proposed "subject."

"Please!" rapped McPherson. "I propose to find out what ails Willem. That is what I'm here for. And I'll thank you not to interfere, Mrs. Batholommey. I never break in on your good husband's pulpit platitudes, and I'll ask you to show the same courtesy toward me. Now then, Willem——"

"Kathrien," expostulated Mrs. Batholommey, "you surely aren't going to permit——?"

A peremptory gesture from McPherson momentarily checked the pendulum of her tongue. Kathrien, too, was very evidently on the doctor's side.

"Willem," said McPherson quietly, "you said just now that Mr. Grimm was in this room. What made you think so?"

"The things he said to me," returned Willem, readily enough.

His simple reply had a galvanic effect on his three hearers.

"Said to you?" bleated Mrs. Batholommey. "Said? Did you say 'said'?"

"Why, Willem!" gasped Kathrien.

"Old Mr. Grimm?" insisted Dr. McPherson. "Willem, you're certain you mean old Mr. Grimm? Not Frederik?"

"Why, yes," assented Willem with calm assurance. "Old Mynheer Grimm."

And now, even Mrs. Batholommey's awed curiosity dulled her chronic conscience-pains into momentary rest. And, with Kathrien, she sat silent, eager, awaiting the doctor's next move.

"And," continued McPherson, "what did Mr. Grimm say to you? Think carefully before you answer."

"Oh," replied Willem, in the glorious vagueness of childhood, "lots and lots of things."

"Oh, really?" mocked Mrs. Batholommey, the disappointing answer freeing her from the grip of awe.

Again McPherson raised a warning hand that balked further comment from her. And he returned to the examination.

"Willem," said he, "how did Mr. Grimm look?"

"I didn't see him," answered the child.

"H'm!" sniffed Mrs. Batholommey.

"But, Willem," urged McPherson, "you must have seen something."

"I—I thought I saw his hat on the peg," hesitated the boy.

All eyes turned involuntarily and in some fear toward the hat-rack.

"No," went on Willem, looking at the vacant peg, "it's gone now."

"Doctor," remonstrated Mrs. Batholommey, impatiently, "this is so silly! It——"

"I wonder," whispered Kathrien to McPherson over the boy's head, "I wonder if he really did—do you think——?"

She did not finish the sentence. A growing look of disappointment and troubled doubt on McPherson's grim face made her reluctant to voice the question that her mind had formed.

"Willem!" said the Dead Man earnestly, pointing towards the pieced-together picture as he spoke. "Look! Show it to her!"

"Look!" echoed Willem, pointing in turn to the photograph. "Look, Miss Kathrien! That's what I wanted to show you when you called to me to go to bed."

"Why!" exclaimed Kathrien, following the direction of the eager little finger. "It's his mother! It's Anne Marie!"

"His mother!" echoed Mrs. Batholommey, focussing her near-sighted eyes on the likeness. "Why, so it is! Well, of all things! I didn't know you'd heard from Anne Marie."

"We haven't," said Kathrien.

"Then how did the photograph get into the house?"

"I don't know," answered the girl. "I never saw the picture before. It is none we've had. How strange! We've all been waiting for news of Anne Marie. Even her own mother doesn't know where she is, and hasn't heard from her in years. Or—or maybe Marta has received the picture since I——"

"I'll ask her," said Mrs. Batholommey, all eagerness now that something tangible was before her.

She bustled off into the kitchen in search of the old housekeeper.

"If Marta didn't get it," mused Kathrien, her face strained with puzzling thoughts, "who did have this picture? And why weren't the rest of us told? Every one knew how eager we were for news of Anne Marie. And who tore up the picture? Did you, Willem?"

"No!" declared the boy. "It was lying here, torn. I mended it."

"But," persisted Kathrien, "there's been no one at this desk,—except Frederik.—Except Frederik," she repeated, half under her breath.

Mrs. Batholommey came back from her kitchen interview, bubbling with importance.

"No," she announced, "Marta hasn't heard a word from Anne Marie. And only a few minutes ago she asked Frederik if any message had come. And he said, no, there hadn't."

"I wonder," suggested Kathrien, "if there was any message with the photograph."

"I remember," volunteered Mrs. Batholommey, "one of the letters that came for poor old Mr. Grimm was in a blue envelope and felt as if it had a photograph in it. I put it with some others in the desk and I told Frederik about it this evening."

Kathrien glanced over the desk and at the floor around it in search of further clues. She saw, in the jardiniere, the charred remnants of a letter and pointed it out to the others. She drew from the debris the unburned corner of a blue envelope.

"That's the one!" cried Mrs. Batholommey. "That's it! The same colour."

"You say the envelope was addressed to my uncle?"

"Yes. It gave me such a turn to see those letters all addressed to a man who wasn't alive to——"

"Oh, what does it all mean?" cried the girl.

"We are going to find out," said McPherson with sudden determination. "Kathrien, draw those window shades close. I want the room darkened as much as possible."

"Oh, Doctor," protested Mrs. Batholommey as Kathrien hastened to obey, "you're surely not going to——?"

"Be quiet. You needn't stay unless you want to."

"Oh, I'll stay. It's my duty. But I don't approve. Please understand that."

Kathrien had returned to her place by the fire and had lifted Willem back on her lap. The doctor, gazing into space, said in a low, reverential tone:

"Peter Grimm! If you have come back to us, if you are in this room—if this boy has spoken truly,—give us some sign, some indication——"

"Why, Andrew, I can't," answered the Dead Man. "Not to you. I have, to the boy. I can't make you hear me, Andrew. The obstacles are too strong for me."

"Peter Grimm," went on the doctor after a moment of dead silence, "if you cannot make your presence known to me—and I realise there must be great difficulties—will you try to send your message by Willem? I presume you have a message?"

Another space of tense silence.

"Well, Peter," resumed McPherson patiently, "I am waiting. We are all waiting."

"Then stop talking and listen to Willem," ordered Peter Grimm.

The doctor involuntarily glanced at the boy. Willem's wide-open eyes were glazed like a sleep-walker's. The hands that had been folded in his lap now hung limply at his sides. His lips parted, and droning, mechanical, lifeless words came from between them.

"There was Anne Marie—and me—and the Other One," said he.

"What Other One?" asked McPherson, speaking in a low, emotionless voice so as not to break in on the thought current.

"The man that came there," droned the boy.

"What man?"

"The man that made Anne Marie cry."

"What man made Anne Marie cry?"

"I—I can't remember," returned the boy, a hesitant note of trouble creeping into his dead voice.

"Yes, you can," prompted Peter Grimm. "You can remember, Willem. You're afraid!"

"So you do remember the time when you were with Anne Marie?" whispered Kathrien as the lad hesitated. "You always told me you didn't. Doctor, I have the strangest feeling. A feeling that all this somehow concerns me, and that I must sift it to the bottom. Think, Willem. Who was it that came and went at the house where you lived with Anne Marie?"

"That is what I asked you, Willem," said Peter Grimm.

"That is what he asked me," replied Willem mechanically.

"Who?" demanded McPherson. "Who asked you that question, Willem?"

"Mynheer Grimm."

"When?"

"Just now."

"Just now!" cried Kathrien and Mrs. Batholommey in a breath.

"S-sh!" admonished the doctor. "So you both asked the same question, eh? The man that came to see——?"

"It can't be possible," expostulated Mrs. Batholommey, "that the boy has any idea what he is talking about."

A glare from McPherson silenced her. Then the doctor asked:

"What did you tell Mr. Grimm, Willem?"

The boy hesitated.

"Better make haste," adjured the Dead Man, "Frederik is coming back."

Willem, with a shudder, glanced fearfully toward the outer door.

"Why does he do that?" wondered Kathrien. "He looked that way at the door when he spoke of 'the Other One.' Why should he?"

"He's afraid," answered Peter Grimm.

"I'm afraid," echoed Willem.

Kathrien gathered him more closely in her warm young arms and whispered soothingly to him. The fear died out of his eyes.

"You're not afraid, any more?" she reassured him.

"N-no," he faltered, "but—oh, please don't let Mynheer Frederik come back, Miss Kathrien! Please, don't! Because—because then I'll be afraid again. I know I will."

McPherson whistled low and long. A light was beginning to break upon his shrewd Scotch brain.

"Willem!" pleaded the Dead Man. "Willem!"

"Yes, sir," answered the boy.

"You must say I am very unhappy."

"He is very unhappy," repeated Willem, parrot-like.

"Why is he unhappy?" demanded McPherson. "Ask him?"

"Why are you unhappy, Mynheer Grimm?" droned the boy.

"On account of Kathrien's future," replied Peter Grimm.

"What?" questioned Willem, who did not quite understand the meaning of the words "account" and "future."

"To-morrow——" began the Dead Man.

"To-morrow——" droned Willem.

"Kathrien's——" continued Peter Grimm.

"Your——" said the boy, glancing at Kathrien.

"Kathrien's?" asked the doctor. "Is he speaking about Kathrien?"

"What is it, Willem?" begged the girl. "What about me, to-morrow?"

"Kathrien must not marry Frederik," said Peter Grimm, as if teaching a simple lesson to a very stupid pupil.

"Kathrien——" began the boy, then flinching, and once more glancing fearfully over his shoulder toward the door, he whimpered:

"Oh, I must not say that!"

"Say what, Willem?" urged McPherson.

"What—what he wanted me to say!"

"Kathrien must not marry Frederik Grimm," repeated the Dead Man. "Say it, Willem?"

"Speak up, Willem," exhorted McPherson. "Don't be scared. No one will hurt you."

"Oh, yes," denied Willem, in terror, "he will. I don't want to say his name! Because—because——"

"Why won't you tell his name?" insisted McPherson.

"Hurry, Willem! Hurry!" begged the Dead Man.

"Oh," wailed Willem, with another terrified glance at the door, "I'm afraid! I'm afraid! He'll make Anne Marie cry again. And me! And me!"

"Why are you afraid of him?" asked Kathrien. "Was Frederik the man that came to see Anne Marie——?"

"Kathrien!" primly reproved Mrs. Batholommey.

Kathrien caught hold of the boy's hand as he rose, shaking, to his feet. She knelt before him.

"Willem!" she implored. "Was Frederik the man who came to see Anne Marie? Tell me!"

"Surely," expostulated Mrs. Batholommey in pious horror, "surely, Kathrien, you don't believe——?"

"I have thought of a great many things this evening," replied Kathrien, vibrant with excitement, yet instinctively lowering her voice so as not to break in on Willem's semi-trance. "Little things that I've never noticed before. I'm putting them together. Just as Willem put that picture together. And I must know who the Other One was."

"Hurry, Willem!" exhorted the Dead Man. "Hurry! Frederik is listening at the door."

The announcement brought Willem around with a gasp toward the door. He stared at its panels, quaking, aghast.

"I won't say any more!" he whimpered, pointing at the door. "He's there!"

"Who was the man, Willem?" entreated McPherson. "Come, lad! Out with it!"

"Quick, Willem!" supplemented Peter Grimm.

Kathrien, acting on an unexplained impulse as Willem stared terror-stricken at the door, hastened toward the vestibule.

"No! No!" shrieked the boy in anguished falsetto as he divined what she was about to do. "Please, please don't! Don't! Don't let him in. I'm afraid of him. He made Anne Marie cry."

But Kathrien's hand was already at the latch. She threw the outer door wide open. Frederik Grimm stood on the threshold, his head still a little forward. His ear had evidently been pressed close to the panel.

"You're sure Frederik's the man?" almost shouted McPherson.

"I won't tell! I won't tell! I won't tell!" screamed the boy, taking one look at Frederik, then tearing loose from McPherson's restraining hand and dashing up the stairs.

"I must go to bed now," sobbed Willem from the gallery above. "He told me to."

He ran into his own room and shut the door quickly behind him.

"You're a good boy, Willem!" Peter Grimm called approvingly after him.

The cloud of grief was gone from the Dead Man's face, leaving it wondrously bright and young. With no trace of anxiety, he turned to witness the consummation of his labours.

Frederik Grimm was standing, nerveless, dazed, where Kathrien's impulsive opening of the door had disclosed him. Dully, he stared from one to another of the three who confronted him. It was Kathrien who first spoke. Pointing toward the photograph that still lay on the desk, she said:

"Frederik, you have heard from Anne Marie."

His lips parted in denial. Then he saw the picture, started slightly, and lapsed into a sullen silence.

"You have had a letter from her," pursued Kathrien. "You burned it. And you tore that picture so that we would not recognise it. Why did you tell Marta that you had had no message—no news? You told her so, since that letter and photograph came. You went to Anne Marie's home, too. Why did you tell me you had never seen her since she left here? Why did you lie to me? Why do you hate her child?"

Frederik made one dogged effort to regain what he had so bewilderingly lost.

"Are—are you going to believe what that brat says?" he muttered.

"No," retorted Kathrien. "But I'm going to find out for myself. I am going to find out where Anne Marie is before I marry you. And I am going to learn the truth from her. Willem may be right or wrong in what he thinks he remembers. But I am going to find out, past all doubt, what Anne Marie was to you. And, if what I think is true——"

"It is true," interposed McPherson. "It is true, Kathrien. I believe we got that message direct."

"Andrew is right, Katje," prompted the Dead Man. "Believe him."

"Yes!" cried Kathrien, as if in reply. "It is true. I believe Oom Peter was in this room to-night!"

"What?" blurted Frederik. "You saw him, too?"

His unguarded query was lost in Mrs. Batholommey's gasp of:

"Oh, Kathrien, that's quite impossible. It was only a coincidence that——"

"I don't care what any one else may think," rushed on Kathrien, swept along upon the wave of a strange exultation that bore her far out of her wonted timid self. "People have the right to think for themselves. I believe Oom Peter has been here, to-night!"

"I am here, Katje," breathed the Dead Man.

"I believe he is here, now!" declared Kathrien, her eyes aglow, and her face flushed. "He is here. Oh, Oom Peter!" she cried, her arms stretched wide in appeal, her face alight, her voice rising like that of a prophetess of old. "Oom Peter, if you can hear me now, give me back my promise! Give it back to me—or I'll take it back!"

"I did give it back to you, dear," answered Peter Grimm happily. "But, oh, what a time I've had putting it across!"



CHAPTER XVII

MR. BATHOLOMMEY TESTIFIES

To Whom It May Concern:

I am Henry Batholommey, rector of the Protestant Episcopal church at Grimm Manor, New York State. My neighbour, Andrew McPherson, M.D., has asked me to substantiate, so far as lies in my power, certain statements in a paper he is preparing for the Society of Psychical Research, concerning certain recent happenings in the house of my former parishioner, the late Peter Grimm of this place.

I refuse.

I understand, also, that in telling the story broadcast, as he has done, he has made free use of my name and that of my wife, as witnesses to these happenings. Wherefore, I am daily in receipt of fully a dozen letters of enquiry. Reporters, so-called scientists, mystics with long hair and unclean nails, and cranks and practical jokers of every sort and description have taken to calling at the rectory, at inconvenient hours, to cross-question me.

For example: one disreputable man, reeking of cheap liquor, came to me yesterday with the information that the story of Peter Grimm's return had converted him and that (with some slight temporary financial assistance from me) he was prepared to renounce liquor and mend his ways. He looked like a penitent. He talked like a penitent. But he most assuredly did not smell like a penitent. And I sent him about his business.

This was but one of many irritating interruptions upon my parish work to which Dr. McPherson's use of my name has subjected me.

In view of all this, I deem it advisable to save myself from further annoyance and to stop the rumour that a minister of the Gospel has turned Spiritualist, by issuing the following brief statement:

Dr. McPherson is desirous that my wife and myself endorse his belief that the occurrences at the home of the late Peter Grimm were of a supernatural nature.

We shall do no such thing.

For the single reason that neither Mrs. Batholommey nor myself, after mature reflection and dispassionate discussion, can find one atom of the Supernatural in any of the events that transpired there. Perhaps I can best make clear my point of view by rehearsing the case and my own very small connection therewith.

The fact that Dr. McPherson is of a different denomination from myself in no way biases my feelings in this case. I am an Episcopalian. And I am of liberal views toward those who are not;—with the possible exception of Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and members of a few other denominations outside the direct Apostolic Succession. Yet I confess I was shocked at the conversion (or perversion) of my old neighbour, McPherson, to a cult which, for want of a better word, I must designate as "Spiritualism."

He told me of a compact he had made with my dear friend and parishioner, Peter Grimm, to the effect that whichever of them should first leave this mortal life was to return and make known his presence to the other. I told McPherson to his face that I regarded such a compact as being even more sacrilegious than senseless. My good wife echoed my sentiments. McPherson, who has not the admirable control over his temper so needful to a medical man, chose to become angry at my outspoken opinion and said several cruelly unjust things concerning my own behaviour toward the late Peter Grimm.

I shall not stoop to denying or even repeating what he said; far less to justify myself. Yet I should like to mention, in passing, that his coarse gibe concerning my fawning on a rich man is the most unjust of all his abominable assertions.

I was in the habit of bringing cases of need before Peter Grimm's notice, it is true. And he responded right generously to every such appeal. I enlisted his financial aid for the local poor, for the Church Building Fund, for missions (home and foreign), and for the other worthy and needy cases.

But for myself or for my family I have never asked for one penny, either from Peter Grimm or from any other man. And as the gifts I have begged were in my Master's name and solely for my Master's service, I do not consider I have demeaned myself. Be that my sole defence. I am content with it.

The public, of late years, has looked askance at the attitude of clergymen toward the wealthier members of their congregation. And, in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, with absolutely no cause. The Church is in need. The poor are in dire distress. Missions languish for the few paltry thousands that would carry the Word triumphant throughout the earth.

Who is to supply these needs? Who but the clergyman? Out of his own scanty salary? That hardly supports him and his. Yet, in proportion, he gives from it as never did a multimillionaire. To whom can he turn for financial help in carrying out his Master's work? To the Rich Man. And, in many cases, the day is past when he can do so without first winning the personal liking of that same rich man. Yes, and often by flattering him and smiling approvingly at his vulgar humour or soothing his equally vulgar rages.

Shame that the deathless Church of God should have been brought to such a pass!

Yes, and tenfold shame to those that sneer at the clergyman who sacrifices and tortures all that is sensitive and sacred in himself, in the effort to wheedle from the wealthy boor the money to save God's poor and God's souls! Is it pleasant for him to fawn and to be patronised? Others do it, I know. But for themselves. The clergyman must do it in his Master's name and for no personal gain.

Let the rector refuse to lower himself thus—What happens? The rich man goes to a church where flattery and subservience are more plentiful. The stiff-necked rector seeks in vain for funds. For lack of money his church runs down. It cannot keep up its charities and its other work.

Who is to blame? The rector, of course. Let us get an up-to-date man in his place. And the clergyman who refused to cringe finds himself not only without a church but with a record that bars him from getting another one. I do not say this state of affairs is universal. But I do say, from bitter experience, that it is far too prevalent. Forgive my digression. I will get back to my statement with all speed.

I have told of the "compact" between Peter Grimm and Andrew McPherson. Mr. Grimm died. Kathrien had promised him to marry his nephew, Frederik. She did not love him. She did love James Hartmann. She has admitted both those facts to me.

As the time for the wedding drew near, she was more and more loath to carry out her promise. McPherson attributes that distaste to the spiritual promptings of Peter Grimm. Can any normal woman (who has been forced to marry one man while loving another) see the remotest hint of the Supernatural in it? No!

Willem, a boy of epileptic tendencies—as McPherson himself admits—had taken his benefactor's death terribly to heart, and had brooded over it day and night. Is there any reason to doubt that in such an unbalanced nature, this brooding, coupled by fever, should have produced a delirium in which he believed he heard Peter Grimm speaking to him?

He also believed, Kathrien tells me, that he heard the circus parade pass the house ten days after it had left town. Is one belief entitled to greater credence than the other? Or did the ghost of a circus parade meander through our Main street at night, accompanied by a Spook brass band? Each idea is quite as probable as the other.

And, from the boy's own statement, Peter Grimm said to him nothing original or even betokening a mind more developed than a child's. Willem knew Kathrien was going to marry Frederik. He knew she did not want to and that he himself disliked and feared Frederik. What more likely than that he should imagine he heard Peter forbid the match?

What more likely, in his own fevered unhappiness, than that he should think Peter Grimm said "I am very unhappy"? Would a man of Peter Grimm's strength and shrewdness come back to earth and tell the child nothing of greater importance than Willem says he told? And, if he could make Willem understand such phrases as "I am very unhappy" and "Kathrien must not marry Frederik," could he not have made the boy understand anything else?

As to Frederik Grimm:—Frederik, we know, was nervous and overwrought. His uncle's death had been a shock—if not a grief. He had the added worry of knowing Kathrien did not really love him. He was in constant fear lest Anne Marie, on hearing of Peter's death, might communicate with her mother and lest the secret of his own relations with the poor girl be exposed. This suspense added to his nervousness.

The sight of her picture and the reading of her pathetic letter stirred his conscience. He forced himself to destroy both bits of evidence. And the action strongly brought before his nerve-racked senses the thought of what honourable old Peter Grimm would have said of such conduct. So strongly, in fact, that in the dark he fancied he saw Grimm's eyes glaring at him. The phenomenon is by no means uncommon and has been explained by scientists upon perfectly natural grounds.

As to Willem's sudden remembrance of half-forgotten facts concerning his own childhood, there is no parent living who cannot cite instances of newly awakened memory, in his or her own child, that are quite as remarkable. The seeing of his mother's photograph brought before Willem the recollection of scenes in which she had played a part; scenes that had been crowded from his mind by later events.

Frederik had just spoken harshly to him. And that recalled harsh words Frederik had spoken to the woman in the picture. And thus, quite simply, his memory supplied the one needful link. What is remarkable in all the foregoing? In fact, Shakespeare's Horatio says:

"There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave, to tell us this!"

So much for Dr. McPherson's efforts to surround a series of normal occurrences with a halo of the Supernatural! Now, let me add a word on my own account, and I am done.