The Dead do not return to the scene of their toil and pain and tears. Would a freed convict sneak back to his prison house or the ex-galley slave to his oar? The convalescent does not crawl into the contagion ward again of his free choice. Nor, I believe, would the Lord permit the return of the Dead; even to bear a warning to those left behind.

Glance at the sixteenth chapter of St. Luke for confirmation of my belief;—at the parable of the "certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day"; and who, in torment, after death, called to Abraham to send Lazarus from Heaven to visit the Tortured One's five brethren:

"That he may testify unto men, lest they also come into this place of torment.

"Abraham said to him: 'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.'

"And he said: 'Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead they would repent.'

"And he said unto him: 'If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded through one rise from the dead.'"

No, the whole idea is preposterous. It is far outside of God's justice and infinitely farther beyond His boundless mercy.

"He giveth His Beloved sleep";—not weary, hopeless wanderings upon the face of the earth.

Peter Grimm did not return. And this is the only comment I care to make upon Andrew McPherson's amazing theory.



CHAPTER XVIII

DR. McPHERSON'S STATEMENT

DR. JAMES HYSLOP.

My Dear Sir:—After reading the account which I am mailing to you under separate cover, will you kindly forward it to the American Branch of the Society of Psychical Research? As you will observe, it is a verbatim report of a "seance."

For your personal information, I beg to make the following supplementary statement.

At the residence of Peter Grimm,—I should say the late Peter Grimm—(the well-known horticulturist of Grimm Manor, N. Y.) certain phenomena occurred this evening which would clearly indicate the Return of Peter Grimm, ten days after his decease. At my first free moment after the manifestation, I jotted down in shorthand the exact dialogue, etc., which I have since transcribed into the enclosed report.

While Peter Grimm was invisible to all, three people were present besides myself; including the "recipient," a child of eight, who had been ill, but was almost normal at the time.

No spelling out of signals nor automatic writing was employed, but word of mouth.

I made a compact with Peter Grimm while he was in the flesh that whichever one of us should go first was to return and give the other some sign. And I propose, by the enclosed report, to show positive proof that Peter Grimm kept his compact and that I assisted in the carrying out of his instructions.

Let me introduce myself and briefly recount the circumstances which led up to the seance, as well as my own state of mind concerning manifestations:

I am a practising physician in the town of Grimm Manor, a suburb of New York City, settled at the time of the Dutch occupation of Manhattan, and named after the family, the Grimms, which first owned the farm that is now the town site.

I have always been greatly interested in Spiritualism. I have read nearly all that has been written on this subject and have known, personally, most all the so-called mediums. I have attended seances in this country and abroad and have by turns been convinced that they were genuine or frauds.

Up to the time when the events which I am about to narrate began to occur, I had been unable to come to a definite decision, as far as my own belief was concerned, as to whether or not the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living. At one time I would be led to believe they could, but then the exposure of some well-known medium as a trickster would change my opinion and I would again find myself puzzling vainly over the answer to this problem.

You doubtless remember the furore which was created in Spiritualistic circles by the announcement of an English physician that, in accordance with a compact, a friend had communicated with him after death.

This idea fascinated me. There is an old Japanese myth to the effect that if a dying man resolves to do a certain act the body will, after death, perform that act. It seemed to me that if a man could die and return to earth in spirit it must be as the result of a resolution to return made just before death and constituting the ruling passion at the time of death itself. I determined that I would put this theory to the test.

We of this materialistic world of barter and sale give little time to the consideration of the Hereafter. There are occasions with most of us when the unanswerable Why and Whence obtrudes itself on our vision, but it is a fleeting impression which vanishes with the rising of the sun on the day's work. The wonder and mystery of life may come home to us at the birth of a child or the death of a loved one, but we soon cease to marvel at the miracle of the former and a new joy banishes grief.

For, we say, what avails it, this search after the Land of the Hereafter, if there be such a place? No one has ever come back to tell us that there is; or what it is and where. It is all a matter of conjecture in which we are following round the circle trod by man since the world began.

One man believes that there is a Hereafter, a spirit land in which the Soul, stripped of all evil, reaches a state of perfection and divine happiness which justifies the stupendous feat of the Creation and the travail of those who are bound to the treadmill of life.

Another believes, pointing for proof to the dead branches from which new leaves spring, that life is endless, and that the soul, leaving the worn-out shell, takes up its dwelling in another form. Another with scorn tells us that all life is a joke and we are the butts of the cruel will of an Omnipotent power. And still another says:

"Any and all beliefs in this matter are good, for none can be proved. Let each believe that which gives him the most happiness, so long as it be noble and sweet and true."

And with this last I hold. So that if it bring peace and love and contentment into the heart of man, woman, or child to believe that the spirit of a loved one, who has solved the Problem mortal cannot solve, can return to earth and communicate by some sign or token with those who were its companions when it inhabited a human house, I say it is wrong to scoff and rail at this belief.

There has now come to me the proof that such a belief does bring peace and love and contentment, that it does cast out evil. With regard to the Psychological aspects of the circumstances which are related in the enclosed transcript, I express no opinion. I have never before had the feeling that a person dead so far as mortal existence was concerned was endeavouring to communicate with me. The debates and wrangles which go on continually between those who affirm and deny the possibility of spirit messages have always impressed me, but beyond a theory, I had no knowledge as to the right or wrong of it. However, I was strongly inclined to believe.

The fact that on many occasions so-called rappings, table liftings, writings, and other supposed spirit manifestations have been shown to be the result of mere human trickery does not necessarily prove that such demonstrations may not be the efforts of an immortal soul to make its presence known.

I say this because I want it understood that I have not allowed any prejudice, favourable or otherwise, to creep into the report that I send herewith. I go no further than to say that if my report helps to prove that the spirit of one we have loved and revered can come back and bring peace and love and happiness to mortals who are in dire need, if it can banish blighting evil from their lives; then life, for all its burdens, is not lived in vain.

Among my dearest friends was Peter Grimm, direct descendant of the founders of the village, who still occupied the old Manor House and was engaged in horticulture. Grimm's tulips were known throughout the country and his business was a large one.

There lived with him Kathrien, whom he had adopted at my suggestion (made at a time when he seemed to be getting morose and verging on becoming a recluse) that he needed a child in the house; Frederik, his nephew and heir; James Hartmann, his secretary, and Willem, the son of Anne Marie, the daughter of Marta, the housekeeper.

Anne Marie had left home in disgrace and had sent Willem to her mother after his father had deserted her. Who this man was had never been revealed, and the whereabouts of Anne Marie herself were unknown at the time I am writing of.

At those times when I leaned toward the conviction that communication between earth and spirit land was possible, I was prone to think that if it could be, it must be between a spirit and a mortal who in life typified in their affection for each other the highest type of pure love. If any mortal, I thought, could receive a spirit message, it must be one whose heart and soul are spotless, whose love is as that of a little child before it has grown to manhood and plucked at the leaves of the Tree of Knowledge.

In the day Kathrien entered his home there was born in Peter Grimm a great love for mankind, but especially for children. Not but that he had always been kindly and charitable to those who deserved his aid, but where before his life had been given up to his business, to making the brown earth do his will, he now devoted his chief thought to making Kathrien happy. This love for children was increased when Willem came to him, and I think the most perfect affection that ever existed among three persons was that which these three bore to each other.

Peter came to me recently to be treated for a cold which, while severe, was not in itself dangerous. But in examining him I found that his heart was in such a condition that a strong emotion, such as intense joy, anger, or fear might cause instant death.

I determined, on discovering this, to ask him to enter into a compact with me that whichever of us should die first should, after death, communicate with the survivor. While I was not sure (although a strong bond of affection existed between us) that I was a person fitted to receive such a communication, I was convinced that either Kathrien or Willem would understand a message sent to me from the spirit land by Peter, and, if the thing were possible, that he, if he could not reach me directly, would do so through one or the other of them.

I made the mistake of telling Colonel Lawton of Peter's condition. I might have known that he would tell his wife. She told Mrs. Batholommey, the wife of the rector.

When I suggested the compact to Peter Grimm, he pooh-poohed the whole idea, laughed at me, told me to get such nonsense out of my head.

But I stuck to it. I told him of the incident of the English doctor and his friend, of the great service that would be done to humanity and science if he or I could prove that signals could be exchanged between a land inhabited by the souls of the dead and this mortal earth. At last he consented.

The rector and his wife called after we had finished our argument, and Mrs. Batholommey as much as told Peter during the course of the conversation that he was doomed. Then poor little Willem blabbed the truth. He had overheard us discussing the matter. Peter reiterated that he would make the compact with me.

We shook hands on it, we sealed it with a touch of our glasses filled with Peter Grimm's famous plum brandy.

There was a circus in town, one of those travelling country affairs, and the parade had passed by the house. Peter gave Willem money to buy tickets.

That was the last I saw or heard in this life of mortal Peter Grimm, standing there with a smile on his face.

I had been absent but a few minutes when I heard Kathrien crying my name. I ran back to the house. Peter Grimm was dead.

Ten days later came the seance described in my enclosure. Later in the evening I went to Willem's room and had a quiet little talk with him. He was calm again and spoke freely of what seemed to him an utterly natural experience. And from that conversation I believe I confirmed still further what was already established as a fact, so far as I was concerned. Peter Grimm had kept his compact with me. He had returned!

I wanted to talk with Willem at a time when he was in a normal condition and not in the thrall of fear. I found him without fever, though weaker than he had been for several days. I assured him that he had nothing to fear from Frederik, that all of us were his friends, and that no harm could come to him.

"Now tell me, Willem," I said, "all about your seeing Uncle Peter this evening."

"I awoke very thirsty and went downstairs for a drink," the boy told me in effect. "The ice pitcher felt so cool that I rested my cheek against it and then I drank some more water. Then I heard some one calling me.

"'Willem, Willem,' a voice said, 'can you hear me? Is there no one in this house that can hear me?'

"I couldn't make out at first who it was. Then I heard it again:

"'Willem, Willem,' it said, 'you must hear me.'

"Then I looked around and saw Mynheer Peter's hat on the rack, and I knew he must have come back. But I couldn't see him.

"'Where are you, Mynheer Peter?' I asked him.

"'You cannot see me, Willem, but I am here. I want you to tell them all I am here.'

"That's as near as I can remember it. We talked a while longer. Then he said something like:

"'Go over and look on the table, Willem.'

"I went to the table and saw some torn pieces of paper.

"'Put them together, Willem,' said Mynheer Grimm.

"When I had got it all pasted together I saw it was my mother, Anne Marie; and then you and Miss Kathrien came down.

"Uncle Peter was standing over there about in the middle of the room. I could tell from his voice, but I couldn't see him.

"'Tell them about the man who made Anne Marie cry,' Mynheer Peter told me. And he kept saying, 'Hurry, Willem, before it is too late; he is coming. Hurry, Willem, hurry,' and just before Mr. Frederik came in Mynheer Peter said, 'Tell them now, Willem; he is listening at the door.'

"Before you came down I asked Mynheer Peter to take me back with him when he went and he said he would."

Now, mind you, Willem knew nothing of the compact Peter and I had made.

Peter Grimm had said he would return, if he could. I believe he did so.

My studies of the so-called "Occult" have done my reputation in this narrow provincial town much harm. I have been sneered at as a "spiritualist," a "spook hunter," an "agnostic." I am none of the three. I am a seeker after Truth; even while fully aware of the impossibility of absolutely finding that elusive quality. Nor do my researches in any way conflict with revealed religion, nor in the simple Bible faith that has ever been mine and that shall forever sustain me.

Having thus set forth my personal position in the matter—perhaps tediously and to an undue length,—I beg to call your attention to my report.

Very truly yours, ANDREW MCPHERSON, M.D.



CHAPTER XIX

BACK TO THE STORY

Dr. McPherson occasionally gave a vigorous shake to his fountain pen, and made corrections here and there.

It was nearly midnight, and he had been writing almost uninterruptedly since he had followed Willem upstairs after the boy's flight.

Willem had been restless and feverish, and had asked repeatedly to be brought down to the living-room. He seemed irresistibly drawn toward the place where he had talked with Peter Grimm and had "almost seen him."

So the sofa had been drawn up to the fire and a bed made for him there. Now, however, he was at last sleeping peacefully in his little upstairs room, and the whole house was quiet, though no one else had gone to bed, and there was everywhere a subdued feeling of excitement.

The doctor had drawn a little table close to the vacant side of the fireplace (for the coals still smouldered, and the night was damp and chill). He had placed Willem's medicines there; and a lamp, the only bright spot in the big room.

Outside, the world was bathed in moonlight, and through the window the arms of the windmill could be seen, waving solemnly round and round like some strange, black mysterious creature beckoning silently from another world.

McPherson was preparing a formal statement of the "seance" while it was still fresh in his mind. And as Willem might need him, he was filling in a waiting hour by writing.

Mrs. Batholommey's anxious face, encased in a scarf, broke in upon his concentration.

"Oh—I'm so nervous!" exclaimed the rector's wife, shudderingly, as she came into the room and going to the piano, turned up the second lamp.

"How can you sit here in such a dim light, after all that has happened in this room—just a few hours ago, too?"

Dr. McPherson, intent upon his work, was determined not to be interrupted. His only reply to Mrs. Batholommey was the scratching of his pen and the rattle of paper as he turned over a page.

"I thought perhaps Frederik had come back," she went on.

"So Willem's feeling better again?" she asked, advancing on the doctor.

"Yes," he answered abstractedly. "I took him upstairs a few minutes ago."

"Strange how the boy wants to remain in this room!" said Mrs. Batholommey.

"M'm——" grunted Dr. McPherson shortly, without looking up at all.

Mrs. Batholommey came nearer and sat down.

"Oh, Doctor! Doctor!" she cried. "The scene that took place here to-night has completely upset me."

The doctor's only reply was to turn his back on Mrs. Batholommey and begin reading his manuscript aloud in an undertone, scratching out a word here, adding something there.

Mrs. Batholommey, quite unconscious that she was a nuisance, leaned back in her chair and let her words flow on.

"Well, Doctor, the breaking off of the engagement is—er—sudden, isn't it? We've been talking it over in the front parlour, Mr. Batholommey and I."

The doctor darted a withering look at her over his spectacles.

"I suggest sending out a card——" she purred, "just a neat card" (here she measured off an imaginary card with her fingers), "saying that owing to the bereavement in the family the wedding has been indefinitely postponed. Of course," she sighed, "it isn't exactly true."

"Won't take place at all," exploded the doctor, going on at once with his reading.

"Evidently not," said Mrs. Batholommey, "but if the whole matter looks very strange to me—How is it going to look to other people—especially when we haven't any—any rational explanation—as yet? We must get out of it in some fashion. I'm sure I don't know how else we can explain—I don't like telling anything that isn't true—but—there was to be a wedding." Mrs. Batholommey waved her right hand. "There isn't to be any wedding," she waved her left hand. "At least, Frederik isn't to be in it—and one must account for it somehow?"

"Whose business is it?" fired the doctor, in a voice that made Mrs. Batholommey start like a frightened rabbit.

For one moment his eyes peered fiercely at her under their shaggy brows, and then he returned to his narrative.

"Nobody's at all," she made great haste to say. "Nobody's at all—nobody's at all, of course. But Kathrien's position is certainly unusual; and the strangest part of it is—she doesn't appear to feel her situation. She's sitting alone in the library seemingly placid and happy. She acts as if a weight were off her mind. But the main point I've been arguing is this: Should the card we're going to send out have a narrow black border, or not?"

She turned toward the doctor and indicated with her fingers the width of black border that seemed to her to fit the occasion. But her trouble was entirely wasted.

Dr. McPherson was once more engrossed in his writing, and had forgotten her existence.

"Well, Doctor," she said in an injured tone, "you don't appear to be interested. You don't even answer!"

"I couldn't," snapped Dr. McPherson. "I didn't know whether you were talking again or still."

Mrs. Batholommey was hurt, and she showed it in the reproachful look she cast at the doctor's unassailable, uninterested back.

"Oh, of course," she said, "all these little matters sound trivial to you. But men like you couldn't look after the workings of the next world, if other people didn't attend to this one. Somebody has to do it," she ended triumphantly.

"I fully appreciate the fact, Mistress Batholommey, that other people are making it possible for me to be myself——"

Here the conversation was interrupted by a couple of raps on the window pane.

"What's that?" cried Mrs. Batholommey, jumping up in alarm.

"Telegram for Frederik Grimm," came a voice from the darkness, and a form was silhouetted against the moonlight.

"Mr. Grimm's down at the hotel," said Mrs. Batholommey, hastily throwing up the window, "but I'll sign for it. Where do I sign?" she fluttered. "Oh, yes, I see, here!"

She wrote Frederik's name, then handed back the book to the telegraph boy, and closed the window. Just as she laid the telegram on the desk, Mr. Batholommey came into the room.

"Well, Doctor," he said with veiled sarcasm, "I would by all means suggest that we don't judge Frederik until the information Willem has volunteered can be verified."

"Umph!" grunted the doctor.

Then he got up and went to the telephone.

"Four—red," he called to "Central."

Mr. Batholommey betook himself to the vestibule and began to put on his rubbers with methodical care.

"However, I regret," (he went on as easily as if the doctor had not grunted) "that Frederik has left the house without offering some sort of explanation."

"Four—red?" pursued the doctor. "That you, Marget? I'm at Peter's. I mean—I'm at the Grimms'. No, don't wait up for me. Send me my bag here. I'll stay the night with Willem. Bye."

He put up the receiver and began to collect his scattered papers.

"Good-night, Doctor," said the clergyman. "Good-night, Rose."

He started toward the door, but the doctor called him back.

"Hold on, Mr. Batholommey!" he interposed. "I'm writing an account of all that's happened here to-night—from the very beginning. I've an idea it's going to make a stir. It's just the sort of thing the Society has been after——"

"Indeed!" said Mr. Batholommey in a doubtful tone.

"When I have verified every word of the evidence by Willem's mother——"

Here the Rev. Mr. Batholommey smiled behind his hand in a decidedly secular way.

"——I shall send in my report," continued the doctor. "Would you have any objection to the name of Mrs. Batholommey being used as a witness?"

Mr. Batholommey hesitated. His usually placid eyes were full of perplexity.

"Well—Doctor—I—I——"

But Mrs. Batholommey, unlike her temporising husband, did not hesitate. She rushed into the conversation all unasked.

"Oh, no, you don't!" she cried. "You may flout our beliefs,—but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with an endorsement by the wife of a clergyman! It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You can't prop up your wild-eyed theories against the good black of one minister's coat. Not by any means! I think myself that you have probably stumbled on the truth about Willem's mother; but that doesn't prove there's anything in all your notions, for that child knew the truth all along. He's eight years old and he was with her until he was five;—and five's the age of memory. He's a precocious boy, besides. Every incident of his mother's life lingered in his little mind. Suppose you prove by her that it's all true?—Still, Willem remembered! And that's all there is to it."

Confident that she had made a good point, Mrs. Batholommey gave her head a toss and left the field, or to be more exact, went out to get her husband's umbrella.

Mr. Batholommey felt that after this display of colours on the part of his consort, he must needs testify also.

"Don't you think, Doctor,—(mind, I'm not opposing your ideas. I'm just echoing just what everybody else thinks)—don't you believe these ideas are leading away from the heaven we were taught to believe in; that they tend toward irresponsibility—toward eccentricity? Is it healthy—that's the idea. Is it—healthy?"

Dr. McPherson shook himself like a shaggy dog.

"Well, Batholommey," he said, "religion has frequently led to the stake, and I never heard the Spanish Inquisition called healthy for anybody taking part in it. Still, religion flourishes. But your old-fashioned, unscientific, gilt, gingerbread idea of heaven blew up ten years ago—went out. My heaven's just coming in. It's new. Dr. Funk and a lot of clergymen are in already. You'd better get used to it, Batholommey, and join in the procession."

Having delivered this ultimatum the doctor became oblivious to the existence of the Batholommey family and gave his whole attention once more to his writing.

"H'm!" said Mr. Batholommey tolerantly. "When you can convince me!" (He lapsed into Dutch.) "Well, tou roustin, Doctor."

The clergyman started for the door, but his dutiful wife was there before him, his umbrella in her hand.

"Good-night, Henry," she said, beaming affectionately on him. "I'll be home to-morrow."

Then with a most coquettish glance, she purred coyly:

"You'll be glad to see me, dear, won't you?"

Mr. Batholommey beamed in his turn, and patted her on the cheek.

"Yes, my church mouse!" he said as he kissed her good-bye and went out into the night.

Mrs. Batholommey closed the doors after him, but immediately opened them a trifle and peered through the crack.

"Look out, Henry, for the trolley cars," she cried. "It's dark out there—And be careful you don't step into a mud puddle! They must be as deep as mill ponds after this rain, and there aren't half enough street lamps in this neighbourhood—you'll be in over your ankles before you know it!"

"All right!" came in a diminuendo from the clergyman's receding form. "I'll be careful. Don't stand there taking cold. Good-night!"

"Woman," thundered Dr. McPherson in a terrible voice, "close that door! Do you want my lamp to blow clean out? How can a body write with such goings-on in his ears? St. Paul was a wise man. 'Let the woman learn in silence,' he said, 'with all subjection.' Will you be good enough to heed that, and let me write in peace?"

Mrs. Batholommey fastened the door with elaborate and most deliberate care; then, as she passed the doctor's table on her way to the front parlour, she fired a parting shot.

"Write as much as you like, Doctor," she said loftily. "Words are but air. You know and I know and everybody knows that seeing is believing."

"Damn everybody!" growled the doctor, frowning at the lady's retreating figure. "It's 'everybody's' ignorance that's set the world back five hundred years. Where was I, before?" he said to himself. "Oh! Yes."

And he went back to his Statement.



CHAPTER XX

THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT

Frederik came impatiently up the home walk. The old house was bathed in moonlight; the walk itself leading up to it was sweet with the scent of wet flowers. The whole place carried a peaceful air, as if a blessing rested upon it. But Frederik heeded nothing—saw none of the beauty and mystery. His mind was filled with quite different things.

He had waited for hours at the hotel, expecting Hicks or his lawyer. When no one arrived at the hour agreed upon, Frederik felt a bit uneasy, but he tried to persuade himself that Hicks had merely missed the train and would come on the next one. With growing apprehension he waited, smoking innumerable cigarettes while the evening wore on, till finally the last train had come and gone. There was nothing to do but go back to the house, and face the other matter. And he dreaded it! Oh, how he dreaded it!

He could not bear the thought of Kathrien's eyes that had first doubted, then accused, then condemned him. All the while he had waited at the hotel, he had remembered those eyes. If he had not loved her sincerely the situation would have been comparatively easy for him; he could simply have cleared out—spent the rest of his days in Europe, if necessary, so that he might never see or hear of any one connected with Grimm Manor again in all his life.

But Kathrien! Who could have been near her and ever forget her? The turn of her head, the absolute sweetness of her—the sunshine she radiated, made it utterly impossible for one to think of forgetting—of living all one's long life without her. Frederik threw away his cigarette and lighted another as he stood outside the windows of the house and looked in.

Oom Peter was there—how could he go in then? Common sense told him that he had been smoking too much and his nerves had gone bad—that he had become an old woman with his fears and tremblings; yet—he knew Oom Peter was there—Well (he shrugged his shoulders), about all the harm that could be done had been done, and he had the money now, anyway, so he might as well go in and find out the present state of affairs. There might be, there ought to be, some word from Hicks by this time. With tight-shut lips, he walked quickly up the "stoop" steps and into the house.

As he came into the living-room he glanced at the doctor, who, with bulky form crouched over the little table, was still busily writing and heard nothing.

Frederik half-unconsciously looked toward Kathrien's room, then removed his silk hat with its mourning band, and his black gloves, and laid them with his cane on the hall table.

Then he turned toward Dr. McPherson.

"Good-evening, Doctor," he said shortly. "Any of them come to their senses yet?"

There was a defiant ring in the last sentence, though he knew in his heart that his cause was lost.

The doctor looked up long enough to say:

"Oh, Frederik, you're back again, are you?" then went on with his writing.

Frederik glanced furtively around the shadowy room, and then lighted some candles in an effort to make the place more cheerful. Suddenly his eye was riveted on the telegram resting conspicuously on his uncle's desk. On the very spot, so it happened, where he had burned Anne Marie's letter. He put down his cigarette quickly.

"Is that telegram for me?" he asked in an eager tone.

"Yes," snorted Dr. McPherson.

"Oh——" Frederik said. "It will explain perhaps why I—I've been kept waiting at the hotel—I had an appointment to meet a man who wanted to buy this business."

"Ha!" The doctor grunted indignantly.

Frederik cleared his throat.

"I may as well tell you—I'm thinking of selling out root and branch."

At this amazing news the doctor got up slowly, and turning his bushy head toward Frederik, fixed his keen eyes upon him. He was all attention now.

"Yes——?"

Then with a sheepish laugh Frederik abruptly changed the subject.

"You'll think it strange," he said, "but I simply cannot make up my mind to go near the old desk of my uncle's—peculiar, yes—isn't it?"

He smiled rather a sickly smile at the doctor, and hesitated.

"I've got a perfect—Ha! Ha!—terror of the thing!"

His laughter was quite mirthless and his fear made him a pitiable object.

The doctor, not trying to hide his contempt for him, went to the desk, took the telegram, and threw it in Frederik's direction, not even troubling to aim accurately.

It hit the floor about two feet away from the younger man's trimly shod feet, and he quickly reached over sideways and seized it. He tore it open. Then, as his eyes took in the message it contained, he drew a long breath.

He sat down mechanically, looking straight ahead of him.

"Billy Hicks," he said slowly in a dazed voice, "Billy Hicks, the man I was to sell out to, is de—I knew it—This afternoon when he phoned—something told me—but I wouldn't believe it."

Slowly he put the telegram in its envelope, and then put the envelope into his pocket; but the dazed look never left his eyes, and his face was grey white.

"Doctor," he said, turning his eyes at last, "as sure as you live, somebody else is doing my thinking for me in this house."

Dr. McPherson's heavy eyebrows met in an earnest frown as he studied Frederik.

"What?" he queried.

"To-night—here in this room," Frederik went on in a voice full of awe, "I thought I saw my uncle there——"

He pointed toward the desk with a little shudder.

"Eh?" said the doctor, with popping eyes, coming a step nearer. "You really mean that you thought you saw Peter Grimm?"

"And just before I—I saw him—I—I—had the strangest impulse to go to the foot of the stairs and call Kitty—give her the house—and run—run—get out."

"Oh!" cried the doctor sarcastically. "A good impulse. I see! Some one else must have been thinking for you—certainly."

"When I wouldn't do it," the scared voice went on, "I thought he gave me a terrible look." He covered his eyes with his hand. "A terrible look."

"Your uncle?" demanded Dr. McPherson.

"Yes," breathed Frederik. "Och! God! I won't forget that look!" he cried excitedly, uncovering his eyes again. "And as I started from the room—he blotted out—I mean I saw him blot out—Then I left the photograph on the desk, and——"

"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor triumphantly. "That's how Willem came by it. Had you never had this impulse before—to give up Kathrien—to let her have the cottage?"

"Not much—I hadn't!" said Frederik decidedly, walking back and forth a moment.

Then, looking toward the desk, he reached out his hand until it touched the back of a chair beside it, and, giving the chair a quick pull out of what was evidently to him a danger zone, he sat down.

"I told you some one else was thinking for me," he said. "I don't want to give her up. I love her." (His eyes went dark.) "But if she's going to turn against me for—well, I'm not going to sit here and cry about it. But I'll tell you one thing: from this time I propose to think for myself. I've done with this house," he cried, getting up. "I'd like to sell it along with the rest and let a stranger"—he flung the chair recklessly against the desk—"raze it to the ground.

"When I walk out of here to-night she can have it."

He looked thoughtfully at the desk a moment.

"Oh, I wouldn't sleep here—I give her the house because—well, I——"

"You want to be on the safe side in case he was there!" scoffed Dr. McPherson.

Frederik dropped his voice almost to a whisper, and there was perplexity in it as well as awe.

"How do you account for it anyway, Doctor?" he asked.

Instead of answering, the doctor asked another question.

"Frederik," he said, "when did you see Anne Marie last?"

"Now," said Frederik disagreeably, "I'm not answering questions."

"I think it only fair to tell you," said Dr. McPherson, "that it won't matter a damn whether you answer me or not. Don't fret yourself that I'm not going to find her. This has come home to me. I'm off to the city to-morrow. I'll have the truth from her; if I have to call in the police to trace her."

Frederik looked drearily at the doctor, then took up his gloves and began to put them on. After a pause he said dully, mechanically:

"Oh, I saw her about three years ago."

"Never since?" probed the doctor.

"No."

"What occurred the last time you saw her?"

"Oh," said Frederik lifelessly. "What always occurs when a young man realises that he has his life before him—and that he must be respected, must think of his future?"

"A scene took place, eh?"

"Yes," Frederik agreed laconically.

"Was Willem present?" went on the interrogation.

"Yes, she held him in her arms."

"And then—what happened?" the doctor insisted.

Frederik dropped his eyes.

"Oh," he said, "then I left the house."

He found his hat and cane as he spoke, and walked slowly toward the door.

"Then it's all true," cried Dr. McPherson in wonderment, staring abstractedly at the floor. He raised his head suddenly and looked with stern eyes at Frederik.

"What are you going to do for Willem?" he demanded.

"Well," temporised that noble soul, "I'm a rich man now—and if I recognise him—there might be trouble. His mother's gone to the dogs anyway——"

He left the speech unfinished and turned his head away uncomfortably. He could not say such things and meet the doctor's scorching look.

"You damned young scoundrel!" bellowed McPherson in wrath. "Oh, what an act of charity if the good Lord took Willem!—And I say it with all my heart. Out of all you have—not a crumb for——"

"I want you to know that I've sweated for that money," Frederik turned on the doctor long enough to say. "I've sweated for it, and I'm going to keep it!"

"You what?" howled Dr. McPherson jeeringly.

"Yes," Frederik cried in the greatest excitement, all his calmness forsaking him utterly. "I've sweated for it! I went to jail for it. Every day I have been in this house has been spent in prison. I've been doing time. Do you think it didn't get on my nerves? What haven't I had to do! I've gone to bed at nine o'clock and lain there thinking how New York was just waking up at that time, and how miserably I was out of it all. Lord! I've got up at cock-crow to be in time for grace at the breakfast table. Why, didn't I take a Sunday-school class to please him?

"Lord! Didn't I hand out the infernal cornucopias at the Church's silly old Christmas tree," he went on quickly, "while he played Santa Claus? What more can a fellow do to earn his money? Don't you call that sweating? No, sir! I've danced like a damned hand-organ monkey for the pennies he left me, and I had to grin and touch my hat and make believe I liked it. Now I'm going to spend every cent for my own personal pleasure."

Once more Frederik started to go.

"Will rich men never learn wisdom?" soliloquised Dr. McPherson as he began to prepare some medicine for Willem.

"No, they won't," Frederik flung back over his shoulder. "But in every fourth generation there comes along a wise fellow—a spender. Well, I'm the spender here."

He pulled out another cigarette, lighted it, and put on his hat.

"Shame on you!" cried the doctor indignantly. "Your breed ought to be exterminated!"

"Oh, no," Frederik declared. "We're as necessary as you are. We're the real wealth distributors. I wish you good-night, Doctor."

And he was gone.

Disgust was still written all over the doctor's face as he measured the medicine carefully and emptied it into a glass of water. He picked up the candelabrum in his other hand, and was just starting toward the stairs and Willem's room when Kathrien came in.

"Kathrien!" he cried in a ringing voice. "Burn up your wedding dress! We've made no mistake. I can tell you that!"

A moment more and he climbed the stairs and had disappeared into Willem's room, leaving Kathrien motionless, her face lighted with happy serenity. Then she went softly to Oom Peter's worn old desk chair, and, standing behind it, put her arms around its sides lovingly, almost protectingly—quite as if its former owner were sitting there and could feel her gentle caress.

"Oom Peter," she whispered tenderly, and her dreamy eyes grew dreamier, "Oom Peter—I know I am doing what you would have me do."



CHAPTER XXI

"ONLY ONE THING REALLY COUNTS"

And Peter Grimm, standing in the shadows, nodded happy assent to her cry. The Dead Man's ageless face was wondrous bright. It shone with a joy that made the rugged features beautiful.

His work was done. His long journey from the Unknown had not failed. The one deed of his mortal life that could have wrought ill was undone. He had atoned for a single fault and had seen the ill effects of that fault brought to nothing. He could go back with a calm mind. All was well in his earthly home.

But he was not yet wholly content. One task remained. A light task, and, to guess from his radiant face, a welcome one. And even now he was bringing to pass its completion. For his eyes turned from their loving scrutiny of Kathrien and rested on the outer door. And, as in response to an unspoken summons, footfalls were heard in the entry.

At the sound, Kathrien's drooping figure straightened. And a glow came into her tired eyes. The outer door opened and James Hartmann came in. He took an impulsive step toward the girl. Then he remembered himself. Turning aside to the rack, he hung his coat and hat on it, and asked, as to a casual acquaintance:

"Have you seen Frederik anywhere? He told me hours ago that he'd join me in the office in a few minutes. I waited, but he didn't come. Then Marta told me he had gone down to the hotel. I went over to see father, and I stopped at the hotel on my way back. They said Frederik had been there, but that he had just gone. I'm rather tired of playing hide-and-seek with him. Has he come in yet?"

"He has come in. But I think he has gone again. And—and, James, I think he will not come here again."

"What? Then the wedding won't be at the house?"

"The wedding won't be—anywhere."

"Kathrien!"

He stared at her, seeking to read grief, humiliation, or, at the very least, the anger engendered of a lovers' quarrel. But her face was serene, even happy. The worry was gone that had lurked behind her gentle eyes. The furrow had been smoothed from the low, white brow, and even the pathetic aura of sorrow that had clung to her as a garment since Peter Grimm's death had departed.

"Kathrien!" he repeated doubtfully, his heart thumping in an unruly fashion that well-nigh choked him.

The serene calm of the girl's face fled beneath his eager, troubled gaze.

"Frederik has gone," she said briefly. "I am not going to marry him. I broke our engagement this evening."

"And you are free—free to——?"

He checked himself, fearful to believe in the marvellous fortune that seemed to have come all at once from the Unattainable into his very grasp. And, girl-like, Kathrien was, of a sudden, panic stricken.

"It is late," she said hastily, "very late. Good-night!"

She made as though to go to her room. And James Hartmann, still full of that new fear of his own good fortune, dared not stay her.

But Peter Grimm did not hesitate.

"Katje!" pleaded the Dead Man. "Is Happiness so common that we can toy with it? Is life's greatest joy so cheap that we can thrust it aside when by a miracle it is laid at our feet? Can we afford to risk everything by putting off love when it is in our very grasp?"

The girl hesitated, paused, and seemed to busy herself with straightening some disarranged articles on the desk. The Dead Man came and stood beside her.

"He loves you, Katje," he murmured. "And only one thing really counts—Love! It is the only thing that tells, in the long run. Nothing else endures to the end. Perhaps, if you are shy now and do not let him speak, he may find courage to speak to-morrow. But perhaps he may not. And are you willing to take that chance?"

"No!" cried the girl in quick fear. "No!"

"What?" asked Hartmann, startled by the frightened denial, so meaningless to him.

"I—I didn't know I spoke," she faltered, embarrassed. "It was foolish of me. I had some strange thought. And——"

"I don't understand."

"You understand less and less every minute, James," laughed Peter Grimm. "She loves you. Are you going to let her slip through your fingers just because you haven't the courage to speak? You were brave enough early this evening when you didn't have a chance. Now that she's yours for the asking, why be tongue-tied? It was the fear of losing you that made her cry out 'No!' just now."

"Katje," demanded Hartmann, abashed at his own audacity, yet unable to keep back the words, "were you afraid I wouldn't be here in the morning to tell you I loved you? Was that why you said——?"

"How did you know?" she gasped appalled. "You read my mind."

Before she could realise the meaning of what she had said, she found herself whirled bodily from the floor and caught close in the grip of two strong arms that crushed her to a heaving breast. And Hartmann was raining kisses on her hair, her eyes, her upturned face.

"James!" she panted. "Don't! Put me down."

"Not till you say you love me," came the answer in a voice from whence all timidity had forever fled.

The tone of glad, adoring rulership thrilled her. She ceased her half-hearted struggles to free herself. Her arms, through no conscious effort of her own, crept upward until they encircled his neck.

"Say you love me!" he demanded again, in that glorious Mastery of the Loved.

"I love you," she answered obediently. "I have always loved you, I think. It's—it's very wonderful to be held like this and—and to be glad not to be let go. I—I—I don't really think I wanted you to let me go, even when I told you to."

"There is something else you must say before I let you go," he demanded, drunk with his new-born power and happiness.

"Yes? I'll say it."

"Say you will marry me to-morrow."

This time, from sheer amazement, she sprang back, out of the loosened clasp of his arms.

"To-morrow?" she gasped. "Are you crazy? Why," with a little shudder, "to-morrow was to be the day I was to——"

"To marry a man you didn't love. That would have made it forever a day of shame. You owe 'to-morrow' something to atone for that. Pay its debt by marrying me then."

"I—I can't," she protested. "What—what would people say?"

"Katje!" broke in the Dead Man. "When you shall have learned that 'what people say' is the most senseless bugbear in all this wide world of senseless bugbears, you will be far on the road to true greatness. You will have broken the heaviest, most galling, most idiotically useless fetter that weights down humanity. Being a woman you will never be able wholly to free yourself from that same fetter. But lift its weight from your soul just this once! You were going to curse your life with a blasphemously wicked, loveless marriage to-morrow. And the world would have approved. You have a chance to atone for an attempted wrong and to win happiness for yourself and the man you love, to-morrow, by marrying James then. A few representatives of the world will hold up their hands and squawk: 'How scandalously sudden! I suppose she did it to show she didn't mind Frederik's jilting her.' And for the sake of the people who would have approved a crime and who will sneer at a good and wise deed, you are going to throw away many days of bliss, and senselessly postpone the one perfect Event of your life. Is this my wise little girl or is it some one just as stubborn and foolish as her old uncle used to be? Tell me."

"Why should we care what 'people say'?" urged Hartmann as Kathrien hesitated. "The opinions of other people wreck lots of lives. Let's be great enough and wise enough to choose our own happiness! Don't let's be stubborn like poor old Mr. Grimm, and——"

"James!" she cried in wonder. "Those are just the very things I was thinking. That's the second time in a few minutes that you have read my mind."

"Perhaps it was you who were reading mine," said Hartmann. "That's what people call 'Telepathy,' isn't it?"

"Yes," smiled the Dead Man. "That is what 'people' call it—who know no better. Oh, what a jumble people do make of the simple things of the Universe!"

"Anyway," went on Hartmann, without waiting for Kathrien to reply to his question, "it doesn't matter which of us thought of it first. It's enough to know it's true. And you will marry me to-morrow?"

"Yes!" vociferated Peter Grimm.

"Y-yes," faltered the girl.

"Listen, dear," continued Hartmann, "we won't be very well off, I'm afraid. I've a little money—but not much. I know scientific gardening as not many men know it. So we won't starve. But it won't be as if you were going to marry a rich man like Frederik Grimm."

"Thank Heaven, it won't!" she breathed fervently. "And do you suppose it will matter one bit to me that we won't be rich? I wish, of course, that we didn't have to leave this dear old house, but——"

"If we had both the house and the little capital that belongs to me," answered Hartmann, "we could stay on here and make a splendid living. But what's the use of building air castles?"

"Why not?" urged the Dead Man. "They're as cheap to build as air dungeons; and a million times pleasanter to live in. But, don't fret about the house. Frederik is going to turn it over to you—I've seen to that. And you will prosper, you two, here in the home I loved."

"I believe it will come out all right!" declared the girl. "I have a feeling that it will. Intuition if you like."

"'Intuition,'" repeated the Dead Man whimsically. "Yes. Call it that, if you choose. 'Intuition' and 'telepathy' are both pretty synonyms for the words spoken to you that mortal ears are too gross to understand and whose sense sometimes finds vague resting-place in mortal brains."

"It will come out all right," she reiterated, smiling up at her lover.

"It's good to see you smile again," said Hartmann, once more drawing her close to him. "I'm glad your cloud of grief is beginning to lift."

"It has lifted," she returned. "When Oom Peter went away, and seemed utterly lost to me forever, I thought my heart would break. But now—now I know he hasn't gone. I know he has been here with me this very evening."

"I—I don't understand."

"It is true," she insisted. "You must believe it, dear. For it is very real to me. I believe he came back to set me free from my promise to Frederik. Some time—some time, I'll tell you all about it."

"In the meanwhile," adjured the Dead Man, "believe her, James. If men would put less faith in their own four-square logic and more faith in their wives' illogical beliefs, there'd be fewer mistakes made."

"Don't ask me any more about it to-night," begged the girl in response to the amazed questioning in her lover's eyes. "I can't speak of it just yet. It's all too near—too wonderful."

"Just as you like," he agreed. "Now I must go, for I want to catch Mr. Batholommey before he goes to sleep, and make the arrangements with him for the wedding."

His arm around her, they crossed to where his hat and coat were hanging.

"I wonder if Oom Peter can see us now?" she mused, as Hartmann stooped to kiss her good-night.

"That's the great mystery of the ages," answered Hartmann. "Who can tell? But I wish he might know. I think, seen as he must see things now, he would be glad. Good-night, sweetheart."

She watched him stride down the walk. Then she came back into the room, her eyes alight.

"Oh, Oom Peter," she murmured, half aloud.

"I see," returned Peter Grimm. "I know all about it. I know, little girl. I know."



CHAPTER XXII

"ALL THAT HAPPENS, HAPPENS AGAIN"

Late as was the hour, Kathrien yet lingered a few minutes longer in the room where that night her freedom and her life's crown had come to her.

She paused by the desk and lovingly caressed the rich, red mass of roses which, in memory of her uncle, she daily placed there. The cool, velvety touch of the blossoms was like a living response to her caress. And from the crimson petals arose a faint, drowsy fragrance.

Kathrien sank into the worn desk chair and gazed dreamily into the dying fire. She seemed to read there a wonderful story. Or else the grey-red embers shaped themselves into beautiful pictures. For her face was joyous beyond all belief.

"To-morrow!" she murmured to herself.

And Peter Grimm, looking down at her, smiled as he caught the whispered word.

"Yes, lievling," he answered. "To-morrow. Isn't it a marvellous word? It holds all the hopes and fears of the whole world."

"I'm so happy! I'm so happy!" she breathed.

The Dead Man laid his hand gently on the soft lustre of her hair.

"Then, good-night to you, my darling," he said in the old tender voice that had comforted her childish griefs and shared her childish delights in the bygone days. "Good-night, my darling. Love can never say 'good-bye.' I am going, little girl. I am leaving you here in your dear home that shall always be yours. Here, in the years that are to come, the way will lie clear before you. May pleasure and peace go with you, little girl of mine."

Her eyes were luminous. There was a half-smile on her lips. Peter Grimm's own eyes reflected her smile as he stroked her hair and continued to look down into her rapt face as though to impress its every detail upon his memory.

"Here on sunny, blossoming days," he went on, "when you look out on my old gardens, as a happy wife, all the flowers and trees and shrubs shall bloom enchanted to your eyes. For, love gives a heaven-light to everything. And when the home we love is our own, it becomes doubly fair."

The light in her eyes grew brighter and he stooped to brush his lips to her forehead.

"All that happens, happens again," he went on in that same caressing voice as though loath to leave her, and seeking to prolong his stay at her side. "And when, as a mother, you explain each leaf and bud, and the miracle of the growing flowers to your own little people, you will sometimes think of the days when you and I walked through the gardens and the leafy lanes together, and how I taught you all those things—even as you shall be teaching your own children. Yes,—all that happens, happens again and has happened before. You will teach them, just as I taught you. And so I shall always linger in your heart. Here, in our home, everything will keep on reminding you of me. Not in sadness nor in gloom. But as a wonderful, golden memory. You will forget only the part of me that was stubborn and unreasonable and ill-tempered—and you will remember me only as I wished to be. That is one of the gifts of God to those who have left this world. Their dear ones remember them only as kind, as loving, as good. Their faults fade from the memory and the good ever glows more and more brightly."

He paused. And still he could not leave the happy girl as she sat there in her blissful, fireside reverie.

"I shall be waiting for you, Katje," he said. "And I shall be knowing all of your life, its joys, its happy toil and its sweet rest, its lights and its passing shadows. I shall love your children with all my whole heart. And I shall be their grandfather just as though I were here. I shall be everywhere about you and yours, Katje. Always. In the stockings at Christmas, in the big, busy, teeming world of shadows, just outside your threshold; or whispering to you in the stillness of the night. And, as the years drift on, you can never know what pride I shall take in your middle life—the very best age of all! After the luxuries and the eager gaieties and the vanities and the possessions and the hot strife for gain cease to be important, we return to very simple things. For then, sunset is at hand, and the peace of Home calls to us far more clearly than the roar of the outer world. The evening of life comes bearing its own lamp."

Her face had grown graver, but still was radiant. The Dead Man smiled as he said:

"Then, as a little old grandmother—a little old child whose bedtime is drawing near, I shall still see you; happy to sit out in the sunlight of another day; asking no more of life than a few hours still to be spent with those you love;—telling your grandchildren how much more brightly the flowers used to blossom when you were young.—All that happens, happens again.

"And then, one glad day, glorified, radiant, young once more—divinely young,—you will come to us. And your mother and I shall take you in our arms again. Oh, what a meeting it will be! To you, many happy years away. To us, only a brief hour of waiting. We shall meet so perfectly then—the flight of Love to Love. And now," bending down once more and kissing her, "good-night, my own little girl."

She rose, half-dazzled by the brightness that filled her soul. Pausing to bury her face for a moment in the bowl of roses, she murmured:

"Dear, dear Oom Peter!"

Then, slowly, smilingly, she made her way up the stairs to her own room. The Dead Man's eyes followed her every light step. The Dead Man's hand was raised in unspoken benediction. Marta bustled in from the kitchen on her nightly round of window-locking and door-barring. As she passed the big wall clock, she stopped, sighed right lugubriously, and proceeded to wind the ancient timepiece by the simple old-time process of drawing down its pulley chain.

"Poor old Marta!" said Peter Grimm quizzically, as she departed. "Every time she thinks of me, she winds my clock. We're not quite forgotten after all, it seems. Good-night, old friend! There are a few tears ahead of you. But there is plenty of sunshine beyond them."

He glanced about the room, his eyes resting at last on Willem's door in the gallery above. The door swung open, and Dr. McPherson appeared on the threshold. In one hand he held a candle-stick. In the hollow of his right arm lay Willem, a Dutch patchwork bedquilt wrapped around him.

"All right, laddie," McPherson was saying in a voice whose softness would have amazed the Batholommeys. "Since you want so badly to sleep downstairs, you shall. The sofa by the fire is just as snug as your own bed. What Mistress Batholommey will say to my giving in to a sick little boy's whim, I don't know. But we don't care. Do we, Willem? And," he added, reaching the living-room and carrying the child across to the sofa, "if you want to be down here, and if you won't be happy anywhere else, here you shall be."

He laid Willem gently on the couch and covered him with the quilt.

"How do you feel, now?" he asked.

"I'm sleepy," answered Willem. "It's good to be in this room. I'll sleep finely here. Could—could I have a drink of water, please?"

The doctor crossed to the sideboard. The ice-water pitcher was empty. McPherson took up a glass.

"I'll find you some," said he. "I suppose I'll never learn my way around the labyrinths of this old house. But if I can't get to the nearest faucet, I'll wake Marta and ask her to help me. Lie still. I'll be back in a minute."

He picked up the lighted candle again, and started off on his quest. As he left the room he passed close by Peter Grimm.

"Good-night, Andrew," said the Dead Man. "I'm afraid the world will have to wait a little longer for the Big Guesser. The secret you've delved for so long and so loudly was in your own hands this evening. And you didn't know what to do with it."

The doctor left the room without hearing him. But Willem heard. Starting up on the couch, the boy cried:

"Oh, Mynheer Grimm! Where are you? I knew you were down here—That's why I wanted to come."

"Here I am," answered the Dead Man, moving forward into the range of the anxiously wandering blue eyes.

"Oh!" gleefully exclaimed the child. "I see you now! I see you now!"

"Yes? At last?"

"Oh, you've got your hat!" went on the boy excitedly. "It's off the peg. You're going!"

"Yes, Willem," replied the Dead Man. "I'm going."

"Need you go right away, Mynheer Grimm?" coaxed the child. "Can't you wait just a little while?"

"I'll wait for you, dear lad," returned Peter Grimm.

"Oh, can I go with you?" asked the boy in glad surprise. "Thank you, Mynheer Grimm! I couldn't find the way without you."

"Oh, yes, you could, Willem. God's signal light is the surest thing in all the universe. But I'll wait for you, just the same."

The boy's drowsiness, overcome for the moment by his sight of the Dead Man's loved face, had crept in upon him once more. He lay back on the couch with a happy little sigh.

And at once he was off in the wonder-aisles of dreamland—a dreamland full of circuses, of impossibly funny and friendly clowns, of street parade glories, of marvellous animals and thrilling equestrian feats.

"Sleep well," said Peter Grimm. "I wish you the very pleasantest of dreams a boy could have in this world."



The doctor's step sounded presently in the adjoining kitchen. As though awakened by it, Willem opened his eyes and sat up. The fever flush was gone from his cheeks, the fever glaze from his look. The lassitude that had weighted every joint in his sick little body had fled, to be replaced by a strange, glorious buoyancy.

With a glad shout, Willem sprang up and raced across the floor into Peter Grimm's outstretched arms.

"Huge moroche, Mynheer Grimm!" he cried. "Oh, I am well! I never was so well before. It's wonderful to be like this."

"You are happy, too?"

"Oh! Happy? It's like school being over!"

"Good!" laughed Peter Grimm. "It will always be like that now. Come! Let's be off."

He lifted the exalted, eager boy lightly from the floor, and swung him to a perch on his shoulder.

"Uncle Rat has come to town!" sang Willem, too rapturously happy to keep still.

"Ha-H'M!" he and Peter Grimm chorused as they moved toward the door.

"'Uncle Rat has come to town, To buy——'"

McPherson came in.

"Here's the water, Willem," he announced, going over to the couch. "I got it at last, after barking my shins over——"

He glanced at the sofa and its occupant. Then the glass fell from his nerveless hand. He knelt in horror beside the still, white little body that lay there.

"Dead!" gasped McPherson.

"No!" exulted Peter Grimm from the doorway. "Not dead, Andrew, old friend. There never was so fair a prospect for life!"

"Oh," sighed Willem blissfully, his arm about Peter Grimm's neck, "I'm so happy! I didn't know any one could be so happy as this—or so well."

"If only the rest of them knew what they are missing! Hey, Willem?" assented Peter Grimm.

"What is Dr. McPherson looking at there on the sofa?" demanded Willem. "He seems scared—and—and—unhappy. What is he looking at, Mynheer Grimm?"

"He is looking at—nothing. And he doesn't know it. Come!"

"It's—it's so wonderful to be alive!" cried Willem.

They passed out, and the door of the house closed noiselessly behind them.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE DAWNING

Night had given place to red dawn, and red dawn to white day.

Dr. McPherson came out of the Grimm house and sat down on the edge of the vine-bordered stoop. He was very tired. He had had a hard and trying night. In his ears were still ringing the sobs of old Marta, hastily awakened to learn of her only grandson's death;—Kathrien's quiet grief;—Mrs. Batholommey's excited, high-pitched questionings that jangled on the death hush as horribly as breaks the Venus music through the Pilgrims' Chorus.

It had been a night of stark wakefulness, of a myriad details. And McPherson had borne the brunt of it all. Now, under an opiate, Marta was asleep. Mrs. Batholommey had trotted ponderously home to bear the black tidings of a prisoned child's Release to her husband. And Kathrien had gone to her own room under the doctor's gruff command to snatch an hour's rest. McPherson himself had come out into the cool and freshness of the new-born world for a breathing space, and to think.

The June day was young. Very young. Under the early sun the grass was afire with dew diamonds. The flowers, dripping and fragrant, held up their cups to the light. The town still lay asleep. Over the suburb brooded the Hush of the primal Wilderness, creeping back furtively and momentarily to its long-lost domain.

And presently the quiet was broken by the swift recurring click of heels on the sidewalk. Some one was coming along the slumbrous Main street; and coming with nervous haste. The steps turned in at the Grimm gate. McPherson raised his blood-shot, sleep-robbed eyes and stared crossly toward the newcomer.

It was Frederik Grimm. And, recognising him, McPherson's frown deepened into a scowl.

"Is it true?" asked Frederik as he stopped in front of the doctor. "I met Mrs. Batholommey. She was just passing the hotel on her way home. I hadn't been able to sleep, so I was starting out for a walk. She told me——"

"That Willem's dead?" finished McPherson, with brutal frankness. "Yes, it's true. Did you suppose that it was a new vaudeville joke?"

Frederik stood blinking, blank-faced, apparently failing to grasp the sense of the doctor's words. The younger man's aspect dully irritated McPherson.

"Yes," he reiterated, "the boy's dead. The problem of supporting him needn't bother you now. Not that it ever did. He's dead. And it's the luckiest thing that ever happened to him."

Frederik raised one hand in instinctive protest. But he might as well have sought to stem Niagara with a straw.

The doctor's strained nerves, his genuine grief, his dislike for the dapper young man before him, combined to open wide the floodgates of honest Scottish wrath. And he saw no cause to exercise self-control.

"You're in luck!" he growled. "The law could have compelled you to pay some such munificent sum as four dollars a week for his maintenance. You're safe from that now. And I congratulate you. It'll mean an extra weekly quart of champagne or a brace of musical comedy seats for you. The law is stringent and I was going to invoke it in your case. You smashed a decent girl's life. You helped bring a nameless boy into a world that would have made his life a hell as long as he lived. Just because his father happened to be a yellow cur. And, in penalty for that sin, the power and majesty of an outraged law would have assessed you about one per cent of your yearly income. You're lucky."

Frederik winced as though he had been lashed across the face.

"I sometimes wonder," continued McPherson, urged to fresh vehemence by sight of the effect he was scoring, "if hell holds a worse criminal or a more mercilessly punished one than the man or woman who lets a little child suffer needlessly—who makes it suffer. And of all the suffering that can be heaped upon a child, everything else is like a feather's weight compared to sending it out in life with a name such as Willem would have borne. Oh, but God's merciful when He finds little children crying in the dark and leads them Home! Batholommey and the rest of them sneer at me for sticking to the old hell-fire Calvin doctrines in these days of pew-cushion religion. But I tell you, in all reverence, if there's no hell for the people who torture children, then it's time the Almighty turned awhile from pardoning sinners and built one."

"Don't worry," said Frederik shortly. "There is one. I know. I am in it."

"'Mourner's bench talk,' eh? It's cheap. Penitence is always on the free list. And in your case, as in most, it comes too late to do any good, except to salve the penitent's feelings. Willem lived in the same house with you for three years. All around him was Love. Except from the one person whose sacred duty it was to give that Love. We pitied him. We knew what he'd be facing if he lived. We made his childhood as happy as we could, so that he'd have at least one bright thing to look back on afterward. He was nothing to any of us. Except that he was a child crippled and maimed and fore-damned for life in the worst way any Unfortunate could be. We pitied him and we loved him. Did he ever hear a harsh word or see a forbidding face? Yes; he did. From one person alone. From you, his father. Even last night when he crept downstairs parched with thirst, and begged you for a drink of water——"

"Don't!" cried Frederik, in sharp agony. "Do you suppose you can tell me anything about that? Do you suppose I haven't gone over it all—yes, and over all the three years—a hundred times since I heard he was dead? Do you think you can make me feel it any more damnably than I do? If so, go ahead and try. You spoke of the need for a hell. You can spare your advice to the Almighty. He has made one. And I can't even wait until I'm dead before I walk through it."

"Through it," assented McPherson sardonically. "Through it with many a lamentable groan and a beating of the breast, and with squeaky little wails of remorse—and on through it, out onto the pleasant slopes of forgetfulness and new mischief. Take my condolences on your fearful passage through your purgatory. I fear me it will take you the best part of a week to pass entirely out of it. It's only a man-built hell, that of yours. And, according to the modern theologians, God has no worse one for you later on."

With twitching, pallid face, and anguished eyes, Frederik Grimm looked dumbly at his tormentor. Even in his agony, he felt, subconsciously, far down in his atrophied soul, that the doctor's forecast as to the duration of his remorse's torture was little exaggerated.

Yet, for the moment, his "man-built hell" was grilling and racking the stricken penitent to a point that the Spanish Inquisition's ingenuity could never have devised.

McPherson, with a sombre satisfaction, noted the younger man's misery. Then a wistful look flitted across his gnarled, bearded face.

"I wonder," he mused, his angry voice sinking to a rumble, "I wonder if you can guess—and of course you can't—what a prize you spent eight years in throwing away. You had a son. And you disowned him and turned your back on him. I've had no son. I shall never have a son. And when I go out into the dark, there'll be no man-child to carry on my name. No lad to inherit this brute body of mine with all its strength and giant endurance; this brain of mine, that has tried so hard to perfect itself and to give its possible successor the faculty for thought and work and self-mastery. My father was a strong man, a great man. And much of the little power and goodness and worthiness that exist in me, I owe to him. No man in future years can say that of me. It must be something that no childless man can understand or dream of, to feel the fingers of one's little son tugging at one. To,—Lord! What would Mother Batholommey say if she could hear me maundering and havering away like this! It means nothing to you, either. Except that you've had, and hated, and thrown away what many a better man would give half his life for."

There was a short silence. McPherson, ashamed of blurting his sacred heart secrets to a fellow he detested, sat gnawing angrily at his ragged grey moustache. Frederik, to whom the last part of the doctor's tirade had passed unheard, stood gazing sightlessly at the ground before him. And for a space, neither of them spoke.

At length Frederik looked up, almost timidly.

"Could—might I see him?" he asked.

"H'm?" grunted McPherson, starting from the maze of his own unhappy thoughts.

"I say, may I go in and see——?"

"Had three years to see him in, didn't you?" demanded McPherson. "I can't recall now that I ever saw you glance at him when you could help it. Why should you go in and see him now? You can't frighten him any more."

He checked himself.

"That last was a rotten thing for me to say," he muttered grudgingly. "I'm sorry."

But Frederik showed no signs of resentment. He was looking moodily at the ground once more, apparently engrossed in the fruitless efforts of a red ant on the walk's edge to lug away a dead caterpillar forty times its size. The doctor peered at him almost apologetically from under his grey thatch of eyebrow. The younger man's face still wore that same blank, dazed mask, as though horror had wiped it clean of expression. Again it was Frederik who broke the silence.

"I remember once," said he, in a dreary monotone, "when he was four years old. He saw a woolly lamb in a shop window and wanted it. I'd lost ninety dollars that day at the races and I was sore. He begged me to buy him the lamb. It cost only a quarter. I wouldn't. I told him he ought to be content to sponge on me for food and clothes without wanting presents, too. I remember he cried when I pulled him away from the shop window. And I hit him. I wish—I wish I'd——"

"If there's anything worse than a hardened criminal," snorted McPherson, "it's a silly, sentimental one. You say you want to go in and see him? Go ahead then. You don't have to ask my leave. It's your own house, isn't it?"

"No," answered Frederik, "it isn't."

"Huh? Oh, I remember now. You said last night you were going to give it to Kathrien. Don't worry. A promise like that isn't binding in law. And you'll repent of it almost as soon as you'll stop repenting for Willem."

"Perhaps so," agreed Frederik. "But it will be too late then. Here," he went on, pulling a long envelope from his pocket, "take charge of this, will you, and give it to Kathrien for her signature in case I don't see her?"

"What is it?" asked McPherson, mechanically taking the envelope as Frederik thrust it into his hand.

"Before I went to the hotel for a room last night," answered the other, "I called on Colonel Lawton and got him to draw it up. All it lacks is her signature."

"What——?"

"It is a deed for the house and the twelve-acre 'home plot' it stands on. That includes the two cottages over on McIntyre Street. They're both rented and in good condition. They'll bring her in nearly eight hundred a year. It's less than my uncle would have left her if he'd known——"

"He knew," interrupted McPherson decisively. "And that's why you did it. As you said last night, 'somebody has been doing your thinking for you.'"

"I'm glad for your own peace of mind that you aren't forced to give me credit for it," said Frederik in lifeless irony. "I'll go in now, if I may. I shall not stay long. And then for New York. It's the best place I know of for hastening one's journey through and out of the 'man-built hell' you spoke about. Oh, and I gave Lawton directions about Anne Marie, too. She can come home now if she wants to without being dependent upon any one for her support. You're quite right, Doctor. Somebody has been doing my thinking. I'm glad it stopped before I went broke."

With something of his old jaunty air he mounted the steps and went into the house. McPherson stared after him with a glower that somehow would not remain ferocious. Then he got up, stretched his great shaggy bulk, yawned, and started homeward for breakfast.

On the way he met Mr. Batholommey, hastily awakened and hurrying to the house of mourning.

"Doctor!" exclaimed the clergyman in agitation. "This is very distressing. Very."

"As usual," drawled McPherson, "I find I can't agree with you. To me it seems a blessed release."

"And on Kathrien's wedding day, too!" went on Mr. Batholommey, to whom McPherson's eternal disagreement had become so chronic he scarce noticed it. "At least, on the day that was to have been her wedding day! Young Hartmann waked me out of a sound sleep last night to tell me she had promised to marry him to-day. And he asked me to be at the house promptly at eleven. But, of course, now——"

"Of course, now," put in the doctor, "the wedding is going to take place just the same."

"But——!"

"I argued with Kathrien a whole half-hour this morning before she would agree to it," went on the doctor. "But at last I persuaded her it was the only thing to do. If ever she needs a husband's help and advice, now is the time. And at last I made her understand that. So, she and James will be married to-day. Just as they planned to. The only difference will be that they'll come to the rectory for the ceremony."

"It seems almost—shall I say indecorous?" protested Mr. Batholommey.

"The real things of life generally do," replied the doctor. "Good-morning. I'm going to be so indecorous as to hurry home for a bath and a breakfast instead of catching cold standing out here on a wet street discussing other people's business."

He strode on. Mr. Batholommey, murmuring dazedly to himself, took up his own journey.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE GOOD-BYE

Frederik Grimm turned away from looking down at the pathetically small figure in the darkened room. His face was expressionless. He had stood there but a few minutes. And his eyes, riveted on the still, white little form, had not softened nor blurred with tears.

Wearily he descended the gallery stairs into the living-room, where the morning sunlight was already turning the desk bowl of roses into a riot of burning colour.

He was halfway across the room, toward the door, when he was aware that Kathrien had risen from the desk chair and was looking at him. Her look was cold and devoid of pity as she surveyed him. But as he halted, hesitant, the sunlight fell full on his face. And in the visage that had seemed so vapidly blank to McPherson, she read much.

The cold glint died from her eyes and she stepped forward with hand outstretched.

"Frederik," she said gently.

He came haltingly toward her. He held out his hand to meet hers. But he could not touch the fingers that were waiting to press his own. His hand fell limply to his side.

She understood. And the warm pity in her face deepened.

"I am sorry," she said simply.

"He is happier," muttered the man.

"I don't mean for Willem. For you. You understand what it all means at last."

"And, too late," he assented. "It is always too late—when one understands."

"It is never too late," she denied eagerly. "Frederik, you have everything ahead of you. You can——"

"I have nothing ahead of me," he contradicted dully.

"You have wealth, youth, the power to undo what wrong you did,—to start afresh——"

"As the broken-winged bird has the power to start a new flight. Don't waste your divine sympathy on me, Kitty. It would be thrown away. In a very little time, as Dr. McPherson has kindly pointed out to me, I shall be convalescent from my attack of remorse. And then all life will lie before me, as you say. All life except the one thing that makes life worth living."

He stopped. For he saw she understood.

"You always understood," he went on, voicing his thought. "That was one of the wonderful things about you, Kitty. Even now, you saw the pain I am in. And it made you forget what you believe I am. It was sweet of you. It will be good to remember."

"I wish I could help you," she said.

"You have helped me," he answered. "For you've given me a Memory to carry till I can shake off the load—till I can get clear of McPherson's 'man-built hell.' It won't be long. So don't worry. Even now, my common sense tells me I've made a fool of myself. And I'm human enough to be more ashamed of being a fool than of being a knave. I had everything in my own hands. And I threw away the game because an attack of fright kept me from playing my winning cards. Last night I was afraid of a ghost. This morning I'm sane enough to know that ghosts were invented by the first nervous man who was alone at night. This morning I am heart-broken because my little boy lies dead. To-morrow I shall be sane enough to know that it is as lucky for me as it is for him, that he died. And in a week I'll be congratulating myself over it all and revelling in a freedom and a fortune I've always craved. So you see I'm quite incurable."

"Why do you say such things?" she cried. "You know they aren't true."

"When I said you 'always understand,' Kitty, I was wrong. You don't understand. No woman understands—that a man doesn't reform. A good man may have taken a wrong twist. And when he finds his way back to the straight road, they say he has 'reformed.' He hasn't. He's only struck his own natural gait again. As he was bound to. And my kind of man sometimes takes a momentary twist in the right direction. Then people say he has reformed. And they are just as much mistaken as they were in the other case. For, water won't run uphill after the first pressure is withdrawn."

"But in the fires of affliction——"

"The fires of affliction," he retorted sadly, "have burned away the dross from the pure gold of many a soul, I suppose. But no fires were ever heated that could burn dross fiercely enough to turn it into gold. Yet——"

He hesitated, then said, without daring to look at her:

"There's one thing I do want you to know, Kitty. Whatever I was and am, and whatever shams went to make up my daily life here—you know my love for you was true and absolute and that I loved and love you more than the whole world besides?"

"Yes," she returned, unembarrassed. "I believe that, Frederik. In part. You loved me as much as you could love any one. But——"

"Why must there be a 'but'?" he entreated.

"But," she went on with the relentlessness of the Young, "not as much as you loved yourself."

"More! Ten thousand times more!" he declared vehemently.

"No," she contradicted. "For you didn't love me enough to give me up when you knew I cared for another man. The Perfect Love would have——"

"The 'perfect love'!" he scoffed. "I have read of it. But I have yet to see it."

"You cannot see it," she replied, "for the same reason I could not see Oom Peter when he was fighting my battle here last night. My eyes were blinded by the world I live in. Perfect love is everywhere. It is within and about us. But——"

"But I would be too ignoble to recognise it if I chanced upon it? Perhaps. But why strip me of my last illusion? In the torment of my self-abasement this morning, I have clung to that one comfort: That I love you with a love which a truly worthless man could not feel. And now——"

"Don't misunderstand me," she begged, half-tearfully. "I——"

"You have shown me the truth. And I ought to thank you for it. Perhaps some day I can. If I still remember it then. Good-bye, dear. I shan't be here again. I've—I've left you a little present. Dr. McPherson will give it to you."

"But I can't take——"

"Oh, yes, you can. It isn't really from me. That's just another of my lies to make a good impression. I've gotten so in the habit of telling them that it is going to take me a long time to realise that one of the chief advantages of being a rich man is the immunity from the need to lie. The present isn't really from me. It's from Oom. Peter. You can't refuse it from him. If you doubt it's Oom Peter's own direct gift, ask Dr. McPherson. It was bad enough," he sighed, in mock despair, "for Oom Peter to squander so much of my money while he was alive, without keeping on doing it after he died. I hope he has stopped it at last. Or I'll soon be reduced to standing at the subway steps with a tin cup in my hand."

Through the forced lightness, whose effort wrung sweat from the man's forehead, Kathrien was woman enough to see the mortal agony that lay beneath. And again she held out her hand.

"Good-bye, Frederik," she said gently. "And may you be happy!"

He looked doubtfully at the shapely little hand. Then, with an awkwardness strangely foreign to his normal grace, he took the hand in both his own and stood a moment, looking down at it as though not knowing what to do with it.

Then, very simply, he fell on his knees, touched the warm, roseleaf palm to his lips, got up and, without looking back, hurried out of the house.

Kathrien watched his slender, carefully groomed figure until it was lost at a turn in the rose bushes. Then she came back into the room and stood beside Peter Grimm's old chair.

"Oom Peter!" she whispered. "This is my wedding day. You know it, don't you? And—oh, please let me think you are close—close—beside me all the time!"

THE END