David galloped the last furlongs with a tightened rein, and froth snowed from the bit. He pulled up in the yard and slipped from the saddle. Christina saw again on his face the white stricken look and the furrowed frown that had stared on Frikkie's death. David stood with the bridle in his hand and the horse's muzzle against his arm and looked around. He saw Christina coming toward him with quick steps, and little Paul, abandoning the skellpot, running to greet him. He staggered and drew his hand across his forehead.

Christina had trouble to make him speak. "A dream," he kept saying, "an evil dream."

"A lying dream," suggested Christina anxiously.

"Yes," he hastened to add, "a lying dream."

"About—about little Paul?" was her timid question.

David was silent for a while, and then answered. "I saw him dead," he replied, with a shudder. "God! I saw it as plain as I saw him a moment ago in the kraal."

They heard the child's gleeful shout the same instant. "I've got you! I've got you!" he cried from without.

"He has a water-tortoise," explained Christina with a smile. "Paul," she called aloud, "come indoors."

"Ja," shouted the child, and they heard him run up the steps of the stoep.

"Look," he said, standing at the door, "I found this in the grass. What sort is it, father?"

David saw something lithe and sinuous in the child's hands, and stiffened in every limb. Paul had a skaapstikker in his grip, the green-and-yellow death-snake that abounds in the veldt. Its head lay on his arm, its pin-point eyes maliciously agleam, and the child gripped it by the middle. Christina stood petrified, but the boy laughed and dandled the reptile in glee.

"Be still, Paul," said David, in a voice that was new to him—"be still; do not move."

The child looked up at him in astonishment. "Why?" he began.

"Be still," commanded David, and went over to him cautiously. The serpent's evil head was raised as he approached, and it hissed at him. Paul stood quite quiet, and David advanced his naked hand to his certain death and the delivery of his child. The reptile poised, and as David snatched at it, it struck—but on his sleeve. The next instant was a delirious vision of writhing green and yellow; there was a cry from Paul, and the snake was on the floor. David crushed it furiously with his boot.

Christina snatched the child. "Did it bite you, Paul!" she screamed. "Did it bite you?"

The boy shook his head, but David interposed with a voice of thunder.

"Of course it did!" he vociferated with blazing eyes; "what else did my dream point to? But we'll fight with God yet. Bring me the child, Christina."

On the plump forearm of Paul they found two minute punctures and two tiny points of blood. David drew his knife, and the child shrieked and struggled.

"Get a hot iron, Christina," cried David, and gripped Paul with his knees.

In the morning the room was wild and grisly with blood and the smell of burnt flesh, and David lay face downwards on the floor, writhing as the echoes of Paul's shrieks tortured his ears. But in the next room little Paul was still for ever, and all the ghostly labor was to no purpose.

I suppose there is some provision in the make of humanity for overflow grief, some limit impregnable to affliction; for when little Paul was laid beside his brother, there were still David and Christina to walk aimlessly in their empty world. Their scars were deep, and they were crippled with woe, and it seemed to them they lived as paralytics live, dead in all save in their susceptibility to torture. Moreover, there was a barrier between them in David's disastrous foreknowledge, for Christina could not throw off the thought that it contained the causal elements which had robbed her of her sons. Pain had fogged her; she could not probe the matter, and sensations tyrannised over her mind. David, too, was bowed with a sense of guilt that he could not rise to throw off. All motive was buried in the kraal; and he and his wife sat apart and spent days and nights without the traffic of speech.

But Christina was seized with an idea. She woke David in the night and spoke to him tensely.

"David," she cried, gripping him by the arm. "David! We cannot live for ever. Do you hear me? Look, David, look hard! Look where you looked before. Can you see nothing for me—for us, David?"

He was sitting up, and the spell of her inspiration claimed him. He opened his eyes wide and searched the barren darkness for a sign. He groped with his mind, tore at the bonds of the present.

"Do you see nothing?" whispered Christina. "Oh, David, there must be something. Look—look hard!"

For the space of a hundred seconds they huddled on the bed, David fumbling with the keys of destiny, Christina waiting, breathless.

"Lie down," said David at last. "You are going to die, little cousin. It is all well." His voice was the calmest in the world. "And you!" cried Christina; "David, and you?"

"I see nothing," he said.

"Poor David!" murmured his wife, clinging to him. "But I am sure all will yet be well, David. Have no fear, my husband."

She murmured on in the dark, with his arm about her, and promised him death, entreated him to believe with her, and coaxed him with the bait of the grave. They were bride and groom again, they two, and slept at last in one another's arms.

In the morning all was well with Christina, and she bustled about as of old. David was still, and hoped ever, with a tired content in what should happen, a languor that forbade him from railing on fate. Together they prepared matters as for a journey.

"If the black trousers come frayed again," said Christina, "try to remember that the scissors are better than a knife. And the seeds are all in the box under our bed."

"In the box under our bed," repeated David carefully. "Yes, under the bed. I will remember."

"And this, David," holding up piles of white linen, "this is for me. You will not forget?"

"For you?" he queried, not understanding.

"Yes," she answered softly. "I will be buried in this."

He started, but recovered himself with a quivering lip.

"Of course," he answered. "I will see to it. I must be very old, Christina."

She came over and kissed him on the forehead.

In the middle of the afternoon she went to bed, and he came in and sat beside her. She held his hand, and smiled at him.

"Are you dying now?" he asked at length.

"Yes," she said. "What shall I tell Frikkie and the kleintje from you?"

"Tell them nothing," he said, after a pause. "It cannot be that I shall be apart from you all long. No; I am very sure of that."

She pressed his hand, and soon afterwards felt some pain. It was little, and she made no outcry. Her death was calm and not strongly distressing, and the next day David put her into the ground where her sons lay.

But, as I have made clear, he did not die till long afterwards, when he had sold his farm and come to live in the little white house in the dorp, where colors jostled each other in the garden, and fascinated children watched him go in and come out. I think the story explains that perpetual search of which his vacant eyes gave news, and the joyous alacrity of his last home-coming, and the perfect technique of his death. It all points to the conclusion, that however brave the figures, however aspiring their capers, they but respond to strings which are pulled and loosened elsewhere.



XII

THE HIDDEN WAY

A veil 'twixt us and Thee, dread Lord, A veil 'twixt us and Thee! Lest we should hear too clear, too clear, And unto madness see.

Carrick crossed the fields in time to see, from the low bank above the churchyard, the children coming forth from Sunday school in the church, blinking contentedly at the late summer sunlight and all the familiar world from which, for two hours, they had been exiles. A little behind them came Mr. Newman, carrying his sober hat in his hand, and the curate.

"Hi!" called Carrick, and they turned toward him as he came down the bank, with his sly spaniel shambling at his heels.

The curate looked with disfavor at Carrick's worn tweed clothes and his general week-day effect. "I think," he said primly, "I'll be getting along."

"I should," said Carrick shortly, turning his back on him. "I want to speak to you, Newman."

"Then we will walk together," agreed Mr. Newman. "Good-bye till this evening," he called after the departing curate.

It was an afternoon of June, languid and fragrant; the declining sun was in their faces as they went in company under the high arches of the elms, in a queer contrast of costume and personality. Carrick, the man of science, the adventurer in the bypaths of knowledge, affronted the Sabbath in the clothes which gave offence to the curate. He was a thin, impatient man, standing on the brink of middle age, with the hard, intent face of one accustomed to verify the evidence of his own senses. A habit he had of doing his thinking in the open air had left him tanned and limber; he walked easily, with the light foot of an athlete, while Mr. Newman, decorous in the black clothes which are the uniform of the regular churchgoer, trod deliberately at his side and mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

"It was very warm in the church this afternoon," explained Mr. Newman mildly. "Very warm."

He was an older man than Carrick, and altogether a riper and most complacent figure. He had a large and benevolent face, which would have been common-place but for a touch of steadfastness and serenity which dignified it, and an occasional vivacity of the kindly eyes. One perceived in him a man who had come smoothly through life, secure in plain faiths and clear hopes, unafraid of destiny. Something reverend in his general effect accentuated his difference from his companion.

"Ventilation," Carrick was saying. "On an afternoon like this you might as well shut those children up in a family vault. Twenty of them, all breathing carbonic acid gas, besides yourself—and that ass!"

"You mean the curate?" inquired Mr. Newman. "Really, he isn't an ass. He didn't like your clothes—that was all."

"What's the matter with 'em?" demanded Carrick, inspecting his shabby sleeve. "You don't want me to dress up like—like you, do you?"

"My dear fellow!" Mr. Newman smiled protestingly, lifting a suave hand. "I don't care how you dress. I don't want you to 'make broad your phylacteries,' you know."

Carrick snorted, and they walked in silence through the little village that lay below the church.

The matter they had in common, which bridged their diversity and made it possible for them to be, after their fashion, friends, was their interest in the subject which Carrick had made his own—experimental psychology. Like all successful business men, Mr. Newman had an unschooled aptitude for the science, and had practised it with profit on his competitors and employees before he knew a word of its technology. In Carrick's bare and lamp-lit study they had joined forces to bewilder and undermine the intelligence of the sly spaniel, and there had been sessions of hypnotism, with Mr. Newman rigid in trances, while Carrick groped, as it were, among the springs of his mind. The pair of them had incurred the indignation of European authorities, writing in obscure and costly little journals whose names the general public never heard. The bond of martyrdom— martyrdom in print—united them.

"By the way," suggested Mr. Newman, when the village was behind them and they were walking between high hedgerows flamboyant with summer growth. "By the way, wasn't there something you wanted to speak to me about?"

"Eh? Oh yes," replied Carrick. "Bother! I want you to come to my place to-night to try something—something new, a big thing."

"To-night?" said Mr. Newman. "No, not to-night, Carrick."

"Why not?" demanded Carrick. "I tell you, it's a big thing. I've had an idea of it for some time; those clairvoyant tests put me on to it; but I've only just got it clear. It's big."

Mr. Newman shook his head. "Not to-night," he said. "You're a queer fellow, Carrick; you never can remember what day of the week it is for more than five minutes at a time."

"Oh!" Carrick scowled. "You mean it's Sunday. But this—I tell you, this isn't just an ordinary thing, Newman. I'll explain—it's new and it's big!"

"No," said Newman. "Not to-night, Carrick, please!"

"Hang it!" said Carrick. He would have spoken more liberally, but the choice was between restraint in language and the loss of Mr. Newman as an acquaintance. That had been made clear soon after their first meeting.

Mr. Newman smiled, and rested a large hand on Carrick's arm.

"We go by different roads to our goal, Carrick," he said, "but it is the same goal. We serve the same Master, under different names and in different ways. You call Him Science and I call Him Christ—the same Master, though; and my services take me to church to-night. But to- morrow, if you like, I will come over to your place."

"Get back," said Carrick violently to the dog. "To heel, you beast!"

The fork of the road was in front of them; they paused at the division of the way.

"Will that suit you?" inquired Mr. Newman. "I can come round after dinner."

Carrick gave him a look in which contempt, fury, and a certainly involuntary liking were strangely at war.

"Of all the sanctimonious asses," he said, and broke off. "Good- night!" he concluded abruptly.

"I'll come, then," said Mr. Newman, smiling. "Good-night, my dear fellow."

He went off at his deliberate gait, humming to himself the tune of the last hymn which the children had sung at the Sunday school. Evening was settling about him on the trees and fields; after the still heat of the sun, it was like an amen to the day, a vast low note of organ music. There was a pond gleaming among the trees.

"He leadeth me beside the still waters," he said aloud to himself, and then Carrick's footsteps were audible behind him. He turned. Carrick came up swiftly.

"Don't eat much dinner to-morrow night," he said, with immense seriousness.

"It's more hypnotism, then?" inquired Mr. Newman.

Carrick nodded. "Yes," he said. "But—it's a big thing, all the same."

He clicked to his dog and went off abruptly, passing with long, jerky strides into the enveloping stillness of the evening, and Mr. Newman resumed his homeward walk, taking up his mood of reflective quiet at the point where Carrick had broken in upon it. He was a man made for the Sabbath; he breathed its atmosphere of a day consecrated to observances with a pleasure that was almost sensuous. For him, piety was that manner of life which gave the quality of Sunday to each other of the seven days of the week, softening them and rendering them august with the sense of a great adorable Presence presiding over their hours.

The curate who disliked Carrick occupied the pulpit that evening; he preached from half a text, after the manner of curates. "For they shall see God"—he repeated it in a poignant undertone—he, tall and young and priestly in his vestments, seen against the dim glory of a stained window—and Mr. Newman, attentive in his pew, leaned forward suddenly to hear, like a man touched by excitement.

Carrick's study was one of a pair of rooms he had added to the farmhouse which he inhabited, a long apartment of many windows, designed for spaciousness, and possessing no other good quality. No fire could warm more than an end of it, and his lamp, wherever it was placed, was but a heart of light in a body of shadow. He had furnished it with the things he required; a desk was here, a table there, bookcases were along the walls, a variety of chairs stood where he happened to push them. It had the air of a waiting-room or a mortuary.

Carrick was at his desk when Mr. Newman, on the Monday evening, was shown in to him by the ironclad widow who kept house for him. He looked up with impatience as his guest entered.

"Oh, it's you?" was his greeting.

"Good evening," said Mr. Newman cheerfully. "You'd forgotten to expect me, I suppose. But I'm here, all the same."

"All right," said Carrick. "Sit down somewhere, will you?"

He rose and shoved a chair forward with his foot for Mr. Newman's accommodation, and began to walk slowly to and fro with his hands in his pockets.

"Well," said Newman; "and what's this miracle we're to work?"

"I'll show you," said Carrick, still walking. He stopped and turned toward his guest. "Newman," he said, "where do you reckon you were a hundred years ago?"

Mr. Newman laughed, crossing his legs as he sat.

"I'm not as old as that," he replied. "Whatever place you're thinking of, I wasn't there."

Carrick was frowning thoughtfully. "I'm not thinking of places," he said. "You—you exist; the matter that composes you is indestructible; the—the essential you, the thing in that matter that makes it mean something, the soul, if you like—that's indestructible, too. Everything's indestructible. A hundred years hence, you'll be somewhere; but where were you—you, that is—a hundred years ago?"

He pointed the "you" with a jabbing forefinger as he spoke it, standing in front of Mr. Newman in the lamplight and talking down to him.

"Oh!" said Mr. Newman, "I see—yes! A hundred years, ago I was part of my Maker's unfinished plan of to-day."

"Were you?" said Carrick, snapping at him. "You were, eh? Part of— we'll see! Come over to the big chair and undo your collar."

Mr. Newman rose; the big arm-chair was his place when Carrick hypnotised him, and the loosening of his collar was part of the ritual.

"What is the idea?" he asked, fumbling at his stud.

"Tell you afterwards," said Carrick. "If I told you now, you'd not get it out of your mind. Can't you get that collar off, man?"

"It was stiff," apologised Mr. Newman, arranging himself in the large chair. "How are you going to do it?"

Carrick's hot hand pressed his head back on the cushions.

"Shut up," he was told. "Let yourself go, now; just let yourself go."

The chair faced the blank, bare wall of the room; there was nothing in front of Mr. Newman for his eyes to rest on and take hold of. Carrick's hands no longer touched his head; he was alone in his chair, in a posture of ease, with the gear of his mind slacked off, his consciousness unmoored to drift with what-ever current should flow about it. He knew, without noting it, that something like a fog was creeping up about him; the pale wall became a bank of mist, stirring slowly; his pulse was a rhythm that lulled him faintly. He— the aggregate of powers, capacities habits that made the sum of him— was adrift, flowing like a vapor that leaks into the air and thins abroad. A coolness was on his forehead as of a little breeze.

Carrick, behind the chair, saw that his head drooped, and came round to look at him. He seemed to slumber with his eyes half open, and his plump hands, white and luxurious, were clasped in his lap. Carrick considered him and then crossed to his desk to get his pipe. He expected to have to wait for some time.

But it was less than five minutes before Mr. Newman stirred like a man who moves in his-sleep and emitted a long gusty sigh. His hands unclasped; he drove up to consciousness like a diver who shoots up through strangling fathoms of water to the generous air above. Life was compelling him; through the confusion of his senses he felt Carrick's hand on his shoulder and heard him speaking.

"Feeling quite all right—what? Here, drink some of this. It's only water. A drop more? Right!"

Mr. Newman pushed the glass away and sat upright, staring wide-eyed into the curious face of Carrick, who bent over him, tumbler in hand.

"All right?" asked Carrick again.

"Yes—now," replied Mr. Newman slowly. "But—what did you do to me, Carrick?"

Carrick gave a relieved snort and set the tumbler down on the mantelshelf.

"What did I do?" he repeated. "Opened a door for you—that's all. What did you find the other side?"

Mr. Newman passed an uncertain hand across his eyes. The feeling with which he had returned to consciousness, that liberties had been taken with him, was leaving him as the familiar ugly room grew about him again.

"It was queer," he said doubtfully, and Carrick bent his head in eagerness to listen.

"You've been hypnotised before, often enough. What was queer?"

"Hypnotism is unconsciousness, so far as I'm concerned," said Mr. Newman. "But this—wasn't! Not dreams, either; the thing was so absolutely real."

"Go on," said Carrick, as he paused to ponder.

"I felt myself going off, you know, just as usual—the mistiness, the reposefulness, the last moment when one would rebel if one could—but one can't; that was all ordinary. And then came the blank, that second of utter emptiness, as though one were alone in the wilderness of outer space, and light were not yet created. As a rule, that ends it; one's asleep then. But this time I wasn't. It seemed—it sort of dawned toward me——" Mr. Newman groped for a word which eluded him, with a face that brooded heavily.

"What did?" demanded Carrick.

"It was a lightness, first of all, a thinning of the dark, that grew and broadened till it was like a thing coming at me—like something thrown at me. And suddenly it was all about me, and I was in it, and it was daylight—just ordinary daylight, you know. There was a white, flat road, with a hedge on one side and a low leaning fence on the other, and over the fence there were fields; and I was walking along by the roadside, with the thick powdery dust kicking up from under my feet as I went."

He paused. "Yes?" cried Carrick. "Yes? Yes?"

"I don't remember what I was thinking," said Mr. Newman. "Perhaps I wasn't thinking. I saw a signpost farther along the road with something like a long bundle—it was rather like a limp bolster, I fancy—hanging from it. I was staring toward it, when there came a noise behind me, like a trumpet being blown, and I turned to see a coach with four horses come tearing along toward me, with a red- coated man at the back, blowing a horn. The roof of it was crowded with people curiously dressed; they all looked down on me as they came abreast, and their faces had a sort of strange roughness. I saw them as clearly as all that—a coarseness, it was—a kind of cruel stupidity. Several of them seemed to be pock-marked, too. It struck me; I wondered how a coach-load of such people had been gathered together; and I might have wondered longer; but one of them laughed, a great neighing guffaw of a laugh, as the coachman swung his whip."

Mr. Newman paused, and his hand floated to his face again.

"It cut me across here," he said thoughtfully. "It—it hurt. Awfully!"

Carrick nodded.

"And that was all," Mr. Newman went on. "At the sting of the lash, as though some one had turned a switch, the daylight went out—to the sound of that gross animal laugh. There was again the frozen dark, the solitude—the chill—and I heard you saying, as from another planet, across great gulfs of space: 'Drink some of this!' Only—"

"Yes?"

"It's like a memory of something that actually took place. I ought to have a weal just below my eyes where the whip took me-it wasn't five minutes ago. I remember the dusty smell of that white road-and how the thing that hung on the signpost was-some-how-ugly and nasty. It's awfully queer, Carrick."

"Yes!" Carrick sank his hands in his pockets and walked away to the shadowy far end of the room. Mr. Newman sat in thought, flavoring the vivid quality of his vision, with his underlip caught up between his teeth. The great room was silent for a space of minutes.

"I say!" Carrick spoke from the other end of it.

"What?"

"That signpost you saw-it wasn't a signpost, you know."

"What was it, then?"

"It was a gallows," said Carrick, "with a man hanging on it."

There was a pause. "Eh?" said Mr. Newman, and rose from his chair. "Carrick, what exactly did you do to me?"

"I sent you back a hundred years," Carrick answered, in a measured voice. His excitement got the better of his restraint and his voice cracked. "Part of the-what was it you said you were, Newman?" he cried, on a note of shrillness. "I tell you, man, you've proved a hundred things you never dreamed of-theories of mine. You've proved them, I tell you. I've dipped you back into the past as I dip my hands into water. What you saw was what happened; it was you-you, man, a hundred years ago. Oh, why did I stop at a hundred? A thousand, a dozen thousand years would have been as easy."

He came down the long room almost at a run.

"Newman," he said, taking the elder man by the arm with a swift, feverish hand; "we've got 'em, all those old diploma-screened fools that call us quacks-Zinzau, Berlier, von Rascowicz, Scott-Evans-we've got 'em. We'll make 'em squeal. Before I've done with you, we'll see what the earth was like when it was in the pot, being cooked. You shall be a batwinged lizard again, and a cave-dweller, and a flint man. We'll turn you loose through history-our special correspondent at the siege of Troy-what?"

He broke into high, uncontrollable laughter.

"The Wandering Jew," he babbled. "We'll show him!"

Mr. Newman heard him with growing wonder, but now he shook his arm loose.

"Get yourself a drink," he said. "You're raving. I want to talk to you."

The word was enough; Carrick stopped laughing, and walked away toward his desk. Mr. Newman, standing by the big arm-chair from which he had just risen, looked after him with a sudden liveliness growing in his face. The experience through which he had just come, abiding with him as so secure a memory, precluded the doubts he might otherwise have felt; Carrick's words and his excitement, so unusual in him, and the clear, unquestionable sense of recollection with which he summoned again to his mind the white dusty road, the swaying body of the hanged man, the drum of the hoofs of the coach-horses-these stormed his reason and forced conviction on him.

"The siege of Troy, you said?" he asked, with a nervous titter. The thing was gripping him.

Carrick had seated himself at his desk, as though to steady himself by the sight of its prosaic litter. He looked up now, his face composed and usual in the light of the reading lamp.

"Or anywhere," he said shortly. He nodded two or three times impressively; he was master of himself again. "It's true, Newman; I can do it; I've opened the door. We must have a few more tests and verify the method by trying it on another subject. Then we'll go to war with the professors."

"Ye-es," agreed Mr. Newman absently. "Anywhere, you said? You can open my eyes at any period in time? You can do that, Carrick?"

"Well," began Carrick, and paused. "Why?" he demanded. "What have you got in your mind?"

Mr. Newman came slowly down toward him till he leaned across the top of the desk facing the younger man. He was smiling still, but a fire had lit in his eyes, something adventurous and strong looked out through them. The elderly stout man was braced and exalted like a martyr going to the stake.

"Can you?" he repeated. "Can you, Carrick? Say—can you do that?"

"Unless——" hesitated the other, staring at him. "But—you must have been somewhere, at any time. Yes, I can do it."

Mr. Newman's eyes looked over his head and beyond him.

"Then," he said, and a deep note reverberated in his even voice— "then show me the day on which Christ died!"

He continued to look past Carrick at the shadowy end of the room, still smiling his strange and uplifted smile.

Carrick moved in his chair, with a half-gesture as of irritation.

"Look here," he said. "Pull yourself together, Newman. There are limits, you know, after all."

Two days elapsed before the evening on which the attempt was to be made; Carrick, alleging difficulties and dangers with long scientific names, had refused to try it earlier. He had been unwilling to try it at all.

"I don't want to mix up a matter of clear science with your religious emotions," he had declared. "And I've got a certain amount of religion of my own, for that matter. I manage to believe in it without corroboration; what's the matter with yours, that you can't do the same?"

But it was not corroboration which Mr. Newman desired. He had not so much argued as insisted; and it had been difficult to reason with his manner of one buoyed up, exalted, inspired. He had had his way, on the sole condition that he should wait two days—"and give sanity a chance," Carrick had added.

But on the stroke of nine, on the appointed evening, he was standing within the door of Carrick's study, his hat in his hand, a white silk muffler about his neck, instead of a collar.

"I was very careful to eat very little at dinner," were his first words.

Carrick, who had been looking forward to his arrival with nervous dread, glanced up sharply with an affectation of annoyance at an interruption.

"More fool you," he barked, in his harshest voice. Mr. Newman smiled, and laid his hat down on the table and began to unwind his muffler.

Carrick frowned at him. "I'm rather busy to-night, Newman," he said. That had no effect. He rose. "Besides, something has occurred to me, and—it is not safe, you know."

Mr. Newman laid his muffler beside his hat; without it he had a curiously incomplete and undressed appearance. He turned round.

"Oh yes, it is," he contradicted mildly. "As safe as it was on Monday, at any rate!"

"Ah!" Carrick caught him up eagerly. "But that wasn't safe, either. I hadn't thought of this then. You see, we don't understand yet how the thing applies. What is it that becomes conscious in the period you see? Is it you, in an earlier incarnation? If so, supposing I—I let go of you at a time when you were dead! What happens then? Do I get you back—or what?"

He tried to make the consideration graphic, driving it at Mr. Newman's serenity with a knit brow and a moving forefinger.

Mr. Newman shook his head. "I don't know," he answered, unmoved by Carrick's fervor. "I can't tell you that. But—you leave me where you found me—in the hands of my God."

With the same quiet cheerfulness, he crossed to the big chair, turned it to face the wall, and sat down in it. "I'm quite ready," he said.

Carrick was still standing by the table. He was frowning heavily; the proceeding was utterly against his inclination. When Mr. Newman spoke, he sighed windily, a sigh of resignation, of defeat.

"I warned you," he said, and wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers for what he had to do.

A less honest man than Carrick, finding himself in the like predicament, might plausibly have contrived a failure. Nothing easier than to tell Mr. Newman that nerves, a mental burden, or what not, stood in the way of the adventure. Mr. Carrick got to work forthwith.

Mr. Newman, supine in his chair, knew the preliminary stages of the process well. They took longer than usual to-night; both of them were unkeyed and had to compose themselves to the affair. But at last the visible world, the wall before him, commenced to dislimn; it shifted; it became mist, writhing and tinged with faint colors, that submerged his will and his consciousness, till they sank, gathering impetus, into a void below—the vacancy of the spirit that looses its hold on the body and is rudderless. He knew the blackness which is death, the momentary throe of entering it, the shock, the sense of chill, the dumbness.

"Ah!" Carrick saw that his head fell, and ceased his labors. He stood, gaunt and perplexed, contemplating the body from which he had expelled the will, the life—the soul. It was a plump body, well clad, well fed, a carcase that had absorbed much of its world. It cost labor and the pains of innumerable toilers to clothe it, nourish it, maintain it, guard, comfort, and embellish it. And an effort of ten minutes was enough to drain it of all save the fleshly, the mere bestial. The habit of his mind impelled him to sneer as he stood above it, to moralise in the tune of cynicism. "Ecce homo!" were the words he chanced upon; but the flavor of them troubled him when he remembered the goal of the journey upon which that absent spirit had departed.

"Oh, Lord!" said Carrick, in a kind of whispering panic.

He cast scared looks to and fro, as though he feared the great room should contain a spy upon him. It was empty save for him and that witless body. He put his hands together with the gesture of a child and shut his eyes tight.

"Our Father," he began, "Which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name!"

The place was as still as a church. He recited his prayer aloud, in a quiet, careful voice that echoed faintly among the book-shelves.

He bad got as far as "Thine is the kingdom, the power"—no farther— when Mr. Newman stirred, and he gabbled the words to an end hastily before he opened his eyes. Mr. Newman came back to consciousness with a rush; his body inflated with life, his still face woke, and his vacant eyes, meeting Carrick's and recognising him, suddenly lit with sense—and terror.

"I say!" exclaimed Carrick; "will you have some water?"

His hand groped for the glass on the mantelshelf, but he continued to look at Mr. Newman, and presently he forgot the glass. Terror was the word, the terror of a man who finds—unawaited, ambushed in his being—depths and capacities unguessed and appalling. A blank, horror-ridden face fronted his own, till Mr. Newman put his hands before his face and shuddered. "What is it?" cried Carrick. "Old chap, what's up?"

"My God!"

It was not an expletive, but a prayer, a supplication. Mr. Newman dashed the hands from his face and sprang up. Carrick caught him by the arm.

"I say," he cried. "It's rot. It's a fake—it must be! Whatever happened—it's not a sure thing. Pull yourself together, Newman. I—I may be wrong; perhaps it's all an induced—you know, an illusion. I say, look here——"

"No!"

Gently, but with decision, Mr. Newman put his friendly hand away. "It's not an illusion," he said.

He walked away. Carrick stood staring after him, a battlefield of compunctions and a growing curiosity. Mr. Newman was wrestling with his trouble in the shadows; minutes passed before he came again into the lamplight. His face was blenched, but something like a stricken purpose dwelt on it.

"I'll tell you," he said. Then, wildly, "Oh, man! why did you let me? This trick of yours—it's the knowledge of good and evil; it's the forbidden fruit. Why did you let me?"

Carrick stammered futilely; there was no answer possible to give.

"I am a Christian," went on Mr. Newman, as though he appealed for justification. "By my lights I serve God. I try not to judge others. I've not judged you, have I, Carrick? You—you don't go to church, but I make a friend of you, don't I?"

"Yes," said Carrick.

"Then—why—" cried Mr. Newman—"why, of all people, should I—oh, Carrick, I don't know how to tell you."

Let Carrick's answer be remembered when his epitaph is written.

"Then don't tell me," he said. "I don't want to hear."

Mr. Newman shook his head. He had come to a standstill at the side of the big chair. He looked old and stricken and sad.

"Ah," he said. "But listen all the same."

He remained standing while he told his tale, with eyes that sought Carrick's listening face and fell away again.

"It took you longer than it usually does," he said; "to send me on, I mean. I expect I wasn't as good a subject as usual, too. I know I was full of a sort of gladness and expectation, for I didn't doubt that you could do it. I had a feeling that I was going to see—really to see, with mortal eyes—Him, my Redeemer, the Son of God! I wasn't afraid—only joyful with a great solemnity. I carried it with me, that joy, into the fog and darkness; it was all that I knew when the utter night surged up and gulfed me, and even life was forgotten. I was to see Him, like the pure in heart who are to see God. I had had that wonder in my mind since Sunday evening; the curate preached on it—and I—I thought my heart was pure."

His fearful eyes fluttered to Carrick's face and sank.

"The light came as it came before," he went on, quickly and miserably. "First a sense of something that was not mere darkness, infinitely distant, but swooping down upon me at an unimaginable speed, broadening more quickly than the sense could follow—and then it was daylight all about me, and I was in the world, seeing, hearing, and—yes, and speaking, speaking, Carrick. Oh, my God!"

He shivered and put a hand out to the arm of the big chair. Carrick said nothing.

"It's so clear," said Mr. Newman. "If it weren't so clear, I might persuade myself that it was an illusion, a vision—but it's not. It happened. The first thing I know was that it was very hot. A sun stood in the sky; its rays beat on me, and they were strong. I was in a crowd of people, and they—we, that is—we all stood facing a building, a white building with a great door. There were many of us; I was thrust between two big hairy men, and there was a great noise. Everybody was shouting. I was shouting too. I had both my arms raised above my head, with my fists clenched—like that——"

Mr. Newman raised his shut hands as high as he could; his tragic face compelled Carrick's eyes.

"But my arms were bare and very brown, I noticed. I was shouting vehemently, frantically, in some strange tongue. It was a language I do not know; but I knew what I was shouting, and I know still."

He stopped. Carrick waited.

"What was it?" he asked at last.

For answer Mr. Newman raised his arms again, the hands clenched, in a sudden and savage gesture.

"I was shouting like this," he said, and raised a voice that Carrick did not recognize. "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

He dropped his arms and stood staring at Carrick; then covered his face with his hands.

Carrick stood aghast and shaken. At last he went to his friend and took his arm.



XIII

THE STRANGE PATIENT

There were only two arrivals by the train from London when it stopped at the little flower-banked station of Barthiam; and Mary, who was waiting for it, had no difficulty in deciding which of them was Professor Fish. That great man never failed to look the part. His tall, lean figure, stooping at the shoulders, his big, smooth-shaven face, mildly abstracted behind his glasses, but retaining always something of a keen and formidable character, his soft hat and great flapping ulster, made up a noticeable personality anywhere. He seemed alone to crowd the little platform; the small man who accompanied him was lost in his shadow.

"Professor Fish?" accosted Mary primly, at his elbow.

He turned upon her with a movement like a swoop.

"I am Mary Pond," she explained. "My father was called away to a case, so he sent me to meet you and bring you up to the house. I have a fly waiting."

"Ah!" The Professor nodded and was bland. "Very good of you to take the trouble, Miss Pond. I am much obliged." He stepped aside to let his companion be seen. "This," he explained, "is your—er—guest."

Mary put out her hand, but the little man, who had been standing behind the Professor, made no motion to take it. He was staring at the planks of the platform; he lifted his eyes for an instant to glance at her, and dropped them again at once. Mary saw a listless, empty face, pale eyes, and pale hair, a mere effect of vacuity and weakness. The man drooped where he stood as though he were no more than half alive; his clothes were grotesquely ill-fitting. A little puzzled, she looked up to the Professor, and saw that he was watching her.

"How do you do?" she asked gently of the little man.

The Professor answered for him. "He does very well, Miss Pond," he said robustly. "Much better than he thinks. Between ourselves," dropping his voice and nodding at her with intention, "a most remarkable case. Very remarkable indeed. And now, if I can find a porter, we might as well be moving."

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before leaving them; then he set off down the platform. He walked with long strides in great spasms of energy, as he did everything. Mary turned from looking after him to the little creature beside her with a sense of absurd contrast. As she did so she saw that he too was looking after the Professor, and his empty face had suddenly become intent; it was hardened and vicious, with the parted lips and narrow eyes of hate. The man had discovered some spring of life within his listless body. It lasted only while one might draw a full breath; then he saw her scrutiny, and sank again to his still dreariness. It was a startling thing to see that flabby little insignificance strengthen to such a force of feeling, and Mary was conscious of a sort of alarm. But before she could frame a thing to say the Professor was back again, and the atmosphere of his vigour had enveloped them.

Professor Fish sat next to her in the cab, and the new patient, who was to be an inmate of her house for some time to come, leaned against the cushions opposite, with eyes half closed and his coarse hands folded in his lap. The Professor talked without ceasing, gazing through the open window at the fat lands of Kent unfolded beside the road and torpid under the July sun; but Mary found more of interest in the still face before her, cryptic and mysterious in its utter vacancy. So little it expressed besides weakness that Mary wondered what illness could thus have cut the man off from the world. She was used to the waste products of life; one "resident patient" succeeded another at her father's house, and to each she was a deft nurse and a supple companion. They had in common, she found, a certain paltriness; most of them had been overtaxed by easy burdens; but this man's aspect conveyed suggestions of a long struggle with a burden beyond all strength. The meanness of him, all his appearance of having begun in the gutter and failed there, touched her not at all; Mary had had too much to do with human flesh in the raw to be greatly concerned about such matters as that.

Dr. Pond was at home to meet them when the cab drew up at the door, an elderly, good-natured man, white-haired and sprucely white- bearded. He greeted Professor Fish with some deference, and helped the new patient carefully forth from the cab. It was Mary's duty to see the one trunk of new shining tin carried in and placed in the room that was prepared for the house's new inmate. This done, she went to the others in the little drawing-room. Her father and Professor Fish were seated in the window, busy with talk; the new patient had an upright chair against the wall, and sat in it with the same lassitude and downcast gaze which had already drawn Mary's wondering compassion. The Professor rose at her entry.

"Ah! Miss Pond," he said in his cheerful, booming voice, "I was just giving your father a few particulars about our young friend."

"I should like to hear them," she answered, taking the chair he reached for her. "You see, I shall have a good deal to do with him."

Old Dr. Pond nodded. "Mary," he said, "is my right hand, Professor."

"Of course," agreed the Professor. "I can see that."

He was seated again, and he leaned across to Mary confidentially, with an explanatory forefinger hovering.

"As I told your father, Miss Pond, it isn't necessary to go far back in the case," he said. "As a matter of fact, I took this case up— experimentally. The subject was a good one for a—well, call it a theory of mine, a new idea in pathology. You see? I wanted to try it on the dog before publishing it, and our young friend there"—he nodded at the back of the room and sank his voice—"he was the dog. You understand?"

Mary nodded, and the Professor smiled.

"Well," he said, "I have succeeded. The patient is convalescent, but—you see how he is. He has very little vital force, and also, occasionally, delusions. Merely ephemeral, you know, but delusions. He wants quiet chiefly, and very little else—just that atmosphere of repose and—er—peace which you can create for him, Miss Pond."

"These delusions," put in Dr. Pond, "are they of any special character!"

"H'm!" The Professor stroked his chin. "No," he said. "Curious, you know, but not symptomatic." His hard eye scanned the old doctor purposely. "Sometimes," he said slowly, "he thinks he has been dead, and that I brought him back to life."

"And he hates you for it," suggested Mary. The Professor stared at her in open astonishment.

"How on earth did you know that?" he cried.

"I saw him looking after you in the station," Mary explained. "He just—glared."

"I see." Professor Fish was always rather extravagant in manner and speech; his relief now seemed a little exaggerated. He drew a deep breath and glanced past Mary to the patient on his chair at the far end of the room. "Yes," he said, "at such times he is distinctly resentful. I don't wonder you noticed it."

"Your letter didn't mention his name," said Mary.

"I should call him Smith," answered the Professor.

"It's a good name. And that, I think, is all there is to tell. Oh, by the way, though he has no suicidal tendency, of course, or I shouldn't put him here; but all the same——"

Mary nodded. "Quite so," she said. "No razor."

"Exactly," said the Professor. "And no money. Give him the things he needs, and let me have the bill."

He rose and reached for his hat.

"But you will stay and have something to eat," protested old Dr. Pond.

"Can't," answered the Professor. "Got an engagement in town. I've just time to catch the train back. Now, you quite understand about this case? Just quietness and soothing companionship, you know, fresh air and sleep, and all that."

"We quite understand," said Mary. "We'll do our best."

"I'm sure you will," said Professor Fish cordially. He moved over to where the patient sat; he had not moved at all. He continued to gaze at the carpet while the tall Professor stood over him.

"Now, Smith," said the Professor in his loud voice, "I'm off. You're in good hands here, you know. You've only to take it easy and rest."

"Rest?" Smith repeated the word in a hoarse whisper; it was the first he had spoken. He looked up, and his eye went to the Professor's face with a sort of challenge.

"Yes," said the Professor. "Good-bye."

Smith continued to look at him, but answered nothing. Professor Fish shrugged his shoulders and turned away sharply.

"He'll soon pick up," he said to Dr. Pond. "And now I really must go."

He shook hands with Mary with a manner of cheerful vigour, beaming at her through his gold-rimmed glasses, big, whimsical, and quick. A moment later, Dr. Pond was showing him out, and Mary, alone with her patient, had another glimpse of hate and contempt animating and enlivening that weak and formless face.

She waited till she heard the front door close and the Professor's departing feet crunch on the gravel of the garden path. Then she went and put a hand on the little man's shoulder.

"You look very tired," she said, quietly, in her level, pleasant voice. "Would you like to go to your room and lie down? And I will send you up some tea."

There was a long pause, and she thought he was not going to answer. But she waited restfully, and at last he sighed.

"Yes," he said wearily, "that's what I want."

His voice had the flat tones of Cockneydom, but Mary took no note of it.

"Then let me show you the way," she said, still gently; and he rose at the word and followed her upstairs.

In this manner the new patient was installed in the household of Dr. Pond. He slipped into his place like a shadow, displacing nothing. The Doctor, swollen with the distinction of a visit by Professor Fish in person, would willingly have made a fuss of him, if it had been possible. But Smith was not amenable to polite attentions. To attempts to render him particular consideration he opposed a barren inertia; one could as easily have been obliging to a lamp-post. The man's consciousness seemed to exist in a vacuum; he lived in a solitude to which the kindly Doctor could never penetrate. Once, certainly, his persistent geniality won him a rebuff. It was at breakfast, and he was following his custom of endeavoring to trap Smith into conversation. Smith sat opposite him at the table, staring vacantly at the tablecloth.

"It is a fine morning," the Doctor observed, "I wonder, now, Mr. Smith, if you would care for a little drive with me. I have some brief visits to pay here and there, and I could drop you here again before I go on. The fresh air would do you good—freshen you up, you know; put a little life into you. Come, now! what do you say to accompanying me?"

Smith said nothing, but his cheek twitched once. "Come now!" pressed the Doctor persuasively. "See what a lovely day it is. Sun, fresh air, the smell and sight of the fields—it'll put fresh life into you."

Smith's white face worked slightly. "Ere," he said, and paused. The Doctor bent forward, pleased. "Go to 'ell!" said Smith thoughtfully.

Mary had much more success with him; a slender link of sympathy had established itself between the healthy, tranquil girl and this dreary wisp of a man. She asked him no questions, and in return for her forbearance he would sometimes speak to her voluntarily. He would emerge from his trance-like apathy to watch her as she went about her household duties. Professor Fish had spoken truly when he said that Mary Pond knew how to create about her an atmosphere of serenity. The tones of her quiet voice, the gentleness of her movements, the kindly sobriety of her regard seemed to fortify her patient. For her part, a genuine compassion for the little man was mixed with some liking; he was a furtive and vulgar creature at the best, but his dependence on her, his helplessness and trouble, reached to the maternal in her honest heart. She could manage him; but for her strategy he would have lived in his bed, day and night, in a sort of half torpor.

"It's remarkable what a control you have over these low natures, Mary," Dr. Pond said to her. He had come home one afternoon to find that she had actually sent Smith out for a walk. "I confess it's a case that's beyond me altogether. There doesn't seem to be any thing to take hold of in the man. It would be better if he felt a little pain now and again; it would give one an opening, as it were."

Seated in a low chair in the window, Mary was hemming dusters. She looked up at him thoughtfully.

"Father," she said, "what do you think was the matter with him in the first place? What was the disease that Professor Fish cured?"

Dr. Pond shook his white head vaguely.

"Impossible to say," he answered. "It looks like, a mental case, doesn't it? And yet——You see, Fish has had so many specialities. He was in practice in Harley Street as a nerve man. Then, next thing, one hears of him in heart surgery. He's had a go at electricity lately. And between you and me—he's a great man, of course—but if it wasn't for his position and all that, we'd be calling him a quack."

"Then you can't tell what the disease was?" persisted Mary.

"No," said Dr. Pond. "Nor even if there was a disease. For all I know, Fish may have been vivisecting him. He wouldn't stop at a thing like that, if I know anything about him."

"He ought to have told us," said Mary.

"Yes," agreed the Doctor. "But Fish always does as he likes. How long has Smith been out now, Mary?"

"He went out at three," she answered. "And now it's half-past five. He ought to be in. I think I'll put my hat on, father, and go after him."

Dr. Pond nodded. "I would," he said.

The road along which Smith had departed ran past the village, and Mary walked forth by it to seek her patient. It was a splendid still afternoon; the trees by the wayside stood motionless in the late heat, their shadows in jet black twined and laced upon the white road. Far ahead of her she could see the land undulating in easy green bosoms against the radiant west; the sun was in her face as she walked. She had no fear that Smith had wandered far; for one thing, he had no strength to do so, and for another, she knew intuitively that the man lacked any purpose to carry him away. Therefore she walked at her ease, keeping cool and comely, and at the first corner in the road met a slim youth on horseback, who stopped to salute her. It was Harry Wylde, son of the great man of the neighborhood.

"Afternoon, Miss Pond," he called cheerfully. "Have you lost a little thing about the size of a pickpocket?"

"A little bigger than that, I think," she answered. "Have you seen him, Mr. Wylde?"

"Yes," said Harry Wylde. "I've seen him before, too, I'll swear. I knew the little beast at once. I say, Miss Pond, how the dickens did you manage to get mixed up with him?"

"He's my patient," said Mary. "Where did you see him, please?"

Harry Wylde pointed down the road. "I passed him just now," he said. "He was in the churchyard."

"The churchyard?"

"Yes, sitting on the grass, having no end of a time. Looked as happy as a trout in a sand-bath. I knew him at once."

"How did you know him?" demanded Mary.

Harry Wylde leaned forward over his saddle. "Miss Pond," he said seriously, "there's hardly a man that goes to races in all England that doesn't know him. His name's Woolley—that's one of his names, anyhow. He was a kind of jockey once, and since then he's been the lowest, meanest little sharper in all the dirty little turf swindles that was ever kicked off a racecourse. If I wasn't sure I wouldn't say so; but you ought to know whom you are entertaining."

"But you must be utterly mistaken," cried Mary. "Professor Fish brought him to us. It's impossible."

"Case of Fish and foul," suggested the youth. "But I'm not mistaken. The man I mean has lost the tip of his ear, the left one. Somebody bit it off, I believe. Now, have you noticed your chap's ear?"

He looked at her acutely, and she colored in hot distress.

"I see you have," he said. "I'd ask this Fish person for an explanation, if I were you; particularly as Woolley is supposed to be dead. The police want him pretty badly, you know. It looks queer, doesn't it?"

"I—I can't understand it," said Mary. "I'm sure there's a mistake somewhere."

Young Wylde nodded. "We'll call it a mistake," he said. "He was injured on the Underground in London and taken to St. Brigid's Hospital, where he died. I remember reading about it. Now, of course, I shan't say anything to anybody; but you ought to have an explanation. Fish—is that his name—seems to have played it pretty low down on you." He gathered up his bridle and nodded to her with intent.

"Good afternoon, Miss Pond," he said. "Sorry to make trouble, but I couldn't leave you in the dark about a thing like this."

Mary walked on to the churchyard in considerable bewilderment. With the character of a patient who came under her care she had no particular concern; a nurse must be as little discriminating as death. But she did not like the story; it troubled and offended her— its connexion with matters that interested the police, and all its suggestion that she and her father were being used as a means of hiding, touched her with a sense of disgust. It did not occur to her to doubt Harry Wylde; he had been altogether too circumstantial to be doubted.

She reached the low wall that separated the churchyard from the road. The old graces, with their tombstones leaning awry, like gapped, uneven teeth, reminded her of her errand, and soon she saw Smith. He had found himself a seat where an old tomb with railings and monument was overrun with ground ivy; he sat among the coarse green of it, staring before him with his chin propped on one hand. All the glory of the western sky was beyond him; his profile stood out against it like a sharp silhouette. Mary stopped to look, and for the time forgot the wretched story she had just heard. The man was as motionless as the stone on which he sat-still with such a stillness as one sees not in the living. But it was not that which held. Mary gazing; it came suddenly to her that in his attitude there was something apt; and significant, something with a meaning, requiring only a key to interpret it. She wondered about it, vaguely, and without framing words for her thoughts it occurred to her that the stillness, the attitude, the mute surrender that spoke in every contour of the silhouetted figure, the very posture of rest, bespoke contentment, tile welcome of relief which one feels on reaching one's own place, one's familiar atmosphere, one's due haven.

Minutes passed, and still she stood gazing; then, as though restive under the impressions that invaded her, she moved forward and entered the churchyard. It was not till she stood before him that Smith was aware of her; with a wrinkling of his brow and a sigh, he came back to his surroundings. Mary saw and noted how the raptness of his face gave way to its usual feebleness as he roused himself.

"You have been out a long time, nearly three hours," he said. "I think you ought to come in now."

He sighed again. "All right," he said slowly. But he did not rise, and Mary did not hurry him. She stood looking down at him, while his slack lips fidgeted and his pale eyes flitted here and there over the ancient graves.

"Why did you come here to this place?" she asked him presently. Her voice was very low.

He hesitated. "It's where I ought to be," he said heavily. "Only I didn't have no luck." One hand went out uncertainly and he pointed to the graves. "Them chaps is past bothering," he said. "There's no gettin' at them."

He shook his head—it was as though he shivered—and relapsed into silence again.

"You shouldn't think about things like that," Mary said.

He looked up at her almost shrewdly. "Think!" he repeated. "I got no need to think. I know."

"Know—what?"

"Ah!" he said, and gat brooding. "I'm alive, I am," he said, at last; "but I been better off once. There's no way of tellin' it, 'cos it don't' fit into words. Words wasn't meant to show such things. But I wasn't just a limpin', squintin' little welsher; I was something that could feel the meaning of things and the reason for them, just like you can feel 'eat and cold. Could feel and know things such as nobody can't feel or know till 'e's done with this rotten bustle of livin' and doin' things. That's what I know, Miss; that's what I found out when I died in that there 'orspital."

Mary stared at him; a brief vivacity was in his face as he spoke, a tone of certainty in his voice.

"But," she cried, "you're alive."

"Ay," he said. "I'm alive. That's the doin' of that Fish. He's the man; proddin' and workin' away there in that big room of his with the bottles and machines, and bits of dead men on the tables. 'E thinks I'm a bit touched in the brain, but I know, I do! I remember all right that mornin', with the grey sky showin' over the wire blinds and the noise of the carts just beginnin' in the streets. There was sparkles in my eyes, flashes and colors, you know, and a feelin' as if I was all wet with warm water. I couldn't see at first, but by an' by I put up my 'and and cleared my eyes—all pins and needles, my 'and was. Then I got on my elbow, and saw—the room and the bottles and all, and me naked on a table under a big light. An' against the wall, at the other side o' the room, there was 'im—Fish—in a white- rubber gown and a face like chalk, shakin' an' sweatin' an' starin' at me. His eyes were all big an' flat; an' I lay there an' looked at him, while he bit his lips an' got a hold on himself. At last 'e come over to me. ''Ow are you feeling?' 'e says. I'd been thinking. 'You devil, you've brought me back,' I shouted. He was shakin' still like a flag in the wind. 'Yes,' he says, 'unless I'm mad, I've brought you back.' I 'adn't the strength to do no more than lie still; so I just watched 'im while 'e got brandy and drank it from the bottle. Oh, I remember; I remember the whole thing. That Fish can fool you an' old Pond, but there's no foolin' me. I know!"

He leaned forward and spat; the gesture emphasised the hard deliberation of his speech. The look he gave her now was much more assured than her own.

"We must be getting back," Mary said uneasily. She remembered what Professor Fish had mentioned of Smith's delusions. But the strangeness and assurance of what he had said were not in accord with what she knew of unstable minds.

He rose and accompanied her docilely enough, but the strength that had furnished him with force to speak seemed to last only while he was in the churchyard. As they went along the quiet road he was again the flimsy, unlovely shell of a man she had first known. They went slowly, for Mary accommodated her gait to his; he walked weakly, looking down always. Where the road passed the end of the village a few people turned to look after them with slow curiosity. The village policeman, chin in hand, stared with bovine intensity; his big, simple face was clenched in careful observation. Mary recalled Harry Wylde's story, and his warning that the authorities had been seeking for Smith; she quickened her pace a little to get out of that mild publicity.

"What were you before you—before you met Professor Fish?" she asked him suddenly.

"A bettin' tout," he answered, "and a thief." He spoke absently and with complete composure.

"Well," said Mary, "will you do something for me if I ask you?"

He looked aside at her. "Don't ask," he said. "Don't ask me to do anything. 'Cos I can't."

"It's only this," said Mary. "What you told me in the churchyard was very wonderful and dreadful; but even if it was true, it would be a bad thing for you to think much about. It couldn't help you to live; it could only come between you and being well. So I want you, as far as you can, not to think about it. Try to forget it. Will you?"

He made some inarticulate sound with his lips. "Did Fish warn you?" he asked. "Did he tell you I was crazy and had notions? Ah!" he exclaimed, "I can see he did. He's as cunning as a fox, he is. He's got me tied hand and foot!"

"Hush! Don't talk like that!" bade Mary. "Do as I ask you. You know I'm your friend. Don't you?"

He shrugged uncertainly. "You would be if you knew how," he said slowly. "But, Lord! you don't know nothing that matters. It's only us that knows what's what—only us."

"Who's us?" asked Mary involuntarily.

He looked full at her. "The dead," he answered, and after that they went on in silence.

It was not easy for Mary to marshal her thoughts that evening, when Smith, after a silent meal, had gone to bed, and left her alone with her father. He had spoken with such an effect of intensity that the impression of it persisted in her memory like the pain that remains from a blow; the figure of him, sitting on the grave, telling his strange story in words of impressive simplicity, haunted her obstinately. She could see easily the picture he had conjured for her of a big electric-lighted room, silent save for remote noises from without, and its equipment of dissecting-tables, bottles, and the machinery of an anatomist. Wylde's story had sunk into the background of her concerns; yet it was of that she had to speak to her father, and she was glad rather than surprised when he made an opening for her himself.

"Smith seems to be rather a mystery at the village," he remarked. "That manner of his is causing talk." He laughed gently. "White—you know Ephraim White, the policeman—he asked me what I knew about him."

"Yes?" said Mary. "Well, young Mr. Wylde asked me the same thing. He was sure he had recognized him."

"Ah! And who was he supposed to be?"

Mary told him what Harry Wylde had said to her in the afternoon, not omitting the mention of the mutilated ear. Dr. Pond heard it without disturbance, nodding thoughtfully as she spoke.

"Ye-es," he said. "It's curious. It would explain the delusions, you know. Smith, bearing a marked resemblance to somebody who is dead—a resemblance that even extends to a certain wound—identifies himself with that person. A rather dramatic position, isn't it? Still, I hope we are not going to have a police inquiry. I shall certainly let Fish know that people are becoming suspicious. What did young Wylde say the other man's name was?"

"Woolley," answered Mary. "Then you will write to Professor Fish, father?"

"Yes," said the Doctor; "He ought to know. I'll write to-night."

"I think I would," agreed Mary thoughtfully, and rose to get him writing materials. But some inward function of her was uneasy; she felt as though she had failed the little man whose reliance was in her. "You know I'm your friend," she had said to him, and this reference to the Professor had not the flavor of full friendship. The same compunction remained with her next morning, and made her specially gentle with Smith. He had fallen back to his usual condition of vacuity and inertia; she had to rouse him to eat and drink when he sat at table with a face as void of life as a death- mask, and eyes empty and unseeing. Dr. Pond had given up his attempts to make conversation with him, and saw him with a slight exasperation which he was sedulous to conceal, so that he was altogether dependent on Mary's unfailing patience.

Professor Fish was not slow to reply to the letter. A telegram from him arrived at lunch time, stating that he would come down next day, and asking that his train might be met.

"That means you'll have to go again, Mary," said Dr. Pond. "I've an appointment at that very hour."

Mary nodded, not displeased at having an opportunity of sounding the Professor before anybody else. She saw that Smith had looked up at the mention of Fish's name with some quickening of interest. She smiled to him and helped him to salad.

The morning of the next day came in squally and wild, with starts of rain, a sharp interruption to the summer's tranquillity. Mary was rather troubled to dispose of Smith during her absence, but ensconced him at last in the room which was known as "the study," an upper chamber where Dr. Pond kept his books and those other possessions which were not in frequent use. Here was a window giving a view over the rain-blurred hedgerows, clear to the swell of the downs, and an arm-chair in which Smith could sit in peace and wear undisturbed his semblance of a man in a trance. With some notion of leaving nothing undone, Mary routed out for him a bundle of old illustrated magazines, and left them on the unused writing-table at his side; he did not glance at them.

"Now," she said, when all was done, "I must go. I shall be back soon. Shake hands with me and say thank you."

She smiled down into his face, as he looked slowly up at her, huddled like a lay figure between the arms of the big chair.

"Yes?" she said encouragingly, for his lips had moved.

"I feel," he said in a whisper——

"Yes," urged Mary. "What?"

"Hope!" he said, aloud, and gave her his hand.

The cab of the village bore her to the station over roads tearful with rain, and arrived there just as the London train came to a stop. The tall figure of Professor Fish, jumping from his compartment and turning to slam the door vehemently, struck her as oddly familiar; the man's personality stood in high relief from his surroundings. Yet there was a certain disturbance in his manner as he greeted her—a touch of the confidential, which added to her curiosity. He sat opposite to her in the cab, so that when he leaned forward to speak, with his hat pushed impatiently back, his big insistent face was thrust forward close to hers, and his great shoulders humped as though in effort.

"This is a very annoying thing, Miss Pond," he began, as the cab started back along the tree-bordered road. "A most annoying thing; privacy was absolutely essential. Here is something done, a big thing, too; and when only privacy, reticence, quiet are essential, we have this infernal fuss on our hands."

He spoke with all his habitual force and volume; but something in him suggested to Mary that he did so consciously and of purpose.

"Well," she said; "there's nobody about here that is likely to guess at your experiment. That isn't the trouble, you know. The trouble is that people say they recognize Mr. Smith as a man who is wanted by the police, who is supposed, too, to be dead. So, you see, the only thing wanted is an explanation."

"Explanation!" He put the word from him with a gesture of his big, smooth hands.

Mary nodded, scanning him coolly. "Yes," she said; "I can understand that an explanation might be difficult."

Professor Fish laughed shortly, a mere bark of sour mirth, and turned to look through the rain-splashed window of the cab.

"Difficult!" he repeated, and turned his face to her again. "Not at all difficult, my dear Miss Pond, but awkward. Lord! it wouldn't do at all!" His eyes behind his glasses became keen and lively. He looked at her carefully.

"He's talked to you, eh? You've heard his story?"

"Yes," answered Mary. "Once; it was very wonderful."

He nodded, still scrutinising her. "I wish I could make him talk," he said thoughtfully. "However——" he shrugged his big shoulders and was silent.

There was a pause then, while the wheels squelched through the mud below, and the rain beat rhythmically on the windows and roof of the cab. Its noise seemed to ally itself to the interior smell of the vehicle, an odor of damp leather and stale straw and ancient stables. The Professor stared intently through the wet glass, and Mary remembered, with a touch of amusement, her first meeting with him, when she had sat beside him and occupied her thoughts with the flabby phantom of Smith.

"You know," she said, at length, "there'll have to be some sort of explanation."

"Well?" demanded the Professor.

"If I knew what you had done to Mr. Smith," she went on, "I could help you to keep things as quiet as possible."

He heard her with a frown and shook his head. "If you knew, you'd do anything but keep it quiet," he answered shortly.

"Then it was something horrible?" asked Mary quickly.

He smiled. "I expect to have many patients for the same treatment," he replied. "Very many; I expect half the world. Where is Smith now?" he asked abruptly.

"At home by himself," replied Mary. "We'll be there in two minutes. You'd like to see him first?"

"Yes, please," he said. "I must have a word or two with him."

Dr Pond had not returned when they drew up at the house, and, as soon as the Professor had rid himself of his ulster and hat, she led him upstairs to the "study."

"You'll find him in here," she said, when they came to the door. "I shall be downstairs when you want me."

The Professor nodded absently and turned the handle. Mary was at the top of the stairs when he entered. She turned even before he cried out, conscious of something happening.

"Stop!" cried the Professor sharply. "Put that down!"

Mary ran to the open door and uttered a cry. Near the window stood Smith, erect and buoyant. The contents of desk-drawers were littered on the floor—papers, old pipes, a corkscrew, various rubbish—and in his hand he held something that Mary recognized with a catch of the breath.

"Father's old pistol!" she said, and shuddered. The Professor had advanced as far as the middle of the room; the desk was between him and Smith, who was looking at him with a smile. Even in the weakness of fear that came over her, Mary wondered at the change in him. His very stature seemed to be greater; there was a grave power in that face she knew as a mask of witlessness and futility. He held the revolver in his right hand with the barrel resting in his left, and looked at the tall Professor with a smile that had no mirth in it, but something like compassion.

"Drop it!" said the Professor again. "Drop it, you fool!" But his voice of authority cracked, and he cried out: "For God's sake don't make a mess of it now."

Smith continued to look at him with that ghost of a smile on his lips, and answered with slow words. He patted the pistol.

"This'll put me out of your reach," he said. "This is what'll do it. You won't be able to patch up the hole this'll make."

He raised the pistol, Mary, powerless to move clenched her hands and whole being for the shock of imminent tragedy.

"Wait!" cried the Professor, and cast a furtive deprecating glance back at Mary. "Wait! I tell you it's no use; you can hurt yourself and disfigure yourself and weaken and impair your body, but not the life! Not the life! I tell you—it's no good!" He flung out a long arm and his great forefinger pointed at Smith imperatively. "I'll have you back," he said. "I'll have you back. You're mine, my man; and I'll hold you. Put that pistol down; put it down, I tell you! Or else——" his arm dropped, and the command failed from his voice. He spoke in the tones of tired indifference. "Do it," he said. "Shoot yourself, if you want to. I'll deal with you afterwards."

There was a pause, measured in heart-beats. Smith showed yet his face of serene gravity. When he spoke, it was strange to hear the voice of the back-streets, the gutter's phrase, expressing that quiet assurance.

"If it wasn't you," he said, "it wouldn't be nobody else. It's only you as can do it." He paused, with lips pursed in deliberation. "If you knowed what I know," he went on, "you'd see it wasn't right. I reckon you'll have to come too."

"Eh?" The Professor looked up quickly, and threw up an arm as though to guard a blow. Mary screamed, and the noise of the shot startled her from her posture and she fell on her knees. The Professor took one pace forward, turned sharply, and fell full length on his face. She heard Smith say something, but the words passed her undistinguished; then the second shot sounded, and the fire-irons clattered as he tumbled among them.

Those that ran up to the room upon the sound of the shooting found her kneeling in the door with her hand over her face.

"Bury them! bury them!" she was crying. "Bury them and let them go!"



XIV

THE CAPTAIN'S ARM

Seafaring men knew it for a chief characteristic of Captain Price— his quiet, unresting watchfulness. Forty years of sun and brine had bunched the puckers at the corners of his eyes and hardened the lines of his big brown face; but the outstanding thing about him was still that silent wariness, as of a man who had warning of something impending. It went a little strangely with his figure of a massive, steel-and-hickory shipmaster, soaked to the soul with the routine of his calling. It seemed to give token of some faculty held in reserve, to hint at an inner life, as it were; and not a few of the frank and simple men who went to sea with him found it disconcerting. Captains who could handle a big steamship as a cyclist manages a bicycle they had seen before; they recognized in him the supreme skill, the salt- pickled nerve, the iron endurance of a proven sailor; but there their experience ended and the depths began.

Sooner or later, most of them went to the Burdock's chief mate for an explanation of the unknown quality. "What makes your father act so?" was a common form of the question. Arthur Price would smile and shake his handsome head.

"It's not acting," he would say. "You drop off to sleep some night on this bridge, and you'll find out what he's after. He's after you if you don't keep your weather eye liftin'; and don't you forget it!"

In those days the Burdock had a standing charter from Cardiff to Barcelona and back with ore to Swansea, a comfortable round trip which brought the Captain and his son home for one week in every six.

It suited the mate's convenience excellently, for he was a man of social habits, and he had at last succeeded in interesting Miss Minnie Davis in his movements. She was the daughter of the Burdock's owner, and Arthur Price's cousin in some remote degree, a plump, clean, clever Welsh girl, of quick intelligence and pleasant good nature. He was a tall young man, a little leggy in his way, who filled the eye splendidly. Women said of him that he "looked every inch a sailor"; matrons who watched his progress with Minnie Davis considered that they would make a handsome couple. Captain Price, for all his watchfulness, saw nothing of the affair. He approved of Minnie, though; she was born to a share in that life in which ships are breadwinners, and never had to be shoo'd out of the way of hauling or hoisting gear when she came down aboard the Burdock in dock. Her way was straight across the deck to the poop ladder and for'ard to the chart-house along the fore-and-aft bridge, trim, quiet-footed, familiar. "What did you find in the Bay?" she would ask, as she shook hands with Captain Price; and he would answer as to one who understood: "It was piling up a bit from the sou'west;" or "smooth enough to skate on," as the case might be. Then, without further formality, he would return to his papers, and Arthur Price would hand over his work to the third mate and wash his hands before coming up to make himself agreeable. He always had more to say about the trip than his father, and he was prone to translate the weather into shore speech. Minnie only half liked his fashion of talking of "storms" and "tempests"; but there was plenty else in him she liked well enough. Best of all, perhaps, she liked the sight of him—a head taller than his father, clean-shaven and accurately groomed, smiling readily and moving easily; he was a capital picture.

She fell into a way of driving down to see the Burdock off. It was thus that Captain Price learned how matters stood. He came straight from the office to the ship, on a brisk July day and went off to her at her buoys in the mud-pilot's boat. All was clear for a start and the lock was waiting; Arthur Price, in the gold-laced cap he used as due to his rank, was standing by to cast off. The Captain went forthwith to the bridge; Minnie on the dock-head could see his black shore-hat over the weather-cloths and his white collar of ceremony. She smiled a little, for she did not know quite enough to see the art with which the Captain drew off from his moorings under his own steam, nor his splendid handling of the big boat as he bustled her down the crowded dock and laid her blunt nose cleanly between the piers of the lock. She was watching the brass-buttoned chief mate lording it on the fo'c'sle head, as he passed the lines to haul into the lock.

Captain Price was watching him, too. He saw him smiling and talking over the rail to the girl.

"Slack off that spring," he roared suddenly, as they began to let the ship down to the sea level; and the mate jumped for the coil on the bitts.

"Keep your eyes about you, for'ard there," ordered the Captain tersely.

"Aye, aye, sir," sang out the mate cheerfully.

The mud pilot, beside the Captain on the bridge, grinned agreeably.

"Arthur's got an eye in his head, indeed," he remarked, and lifted his cap to Minnie.

The Captain snorted, and gave his whole attention to hauling out, only turning his head at the last minute to wave a farewell to his owner's daughter. The mud pilot took charge and brought her clear; and as soon as he had gone over to his boat, the Captain rang for full steam ahead and waited for the mate to take the bridge.

The young man came up smiling. "It's a fine morning, father," he remarked, as he walked over to the binnacle.

"Mister Mate," said the Captain harshly, "you all but lost me that hawser."

"Just in time, wasn't it?" replied the mate pleasantly.

"I don't reckon to slack off and take in my lines myself," went on the Captain. "I reckon to leave that to my officers. And if an officer carries; away a five-inch manila through makin' eyes at girls on the pier-head, I dock his wages for the cost of it, and I log him for neglectin' his duty."

The mate looked: at him sharply for a moment; the Captain scowled back.

"Have you got anything to say to me?" demanded the Captain.

"Yes," said the mate, "I have." He broke into a smile. "But it's something I can't say while you're actin' the man-o'-war captain on your bridge. It doesn't concern the work o' the ship."

"What does it concern?" asked the Captain.

"Me," said the mate. He folded his arms across the binnacle and looked into his father's face confidently. The Captain softened.

"Well, Arthur?" he said.

"That was Minnie on the pier-head," said the mate. The Captain nodded. "I was up at their place last night," the young man continued, "and we had a talk—she and I—and so it came about that we fixed things between us. Mr. Davis is agreeable, so long——-"

"Hey, what's this?" The Captain stared at his son amazedly. "What was it you fixed up with Minnie?"

"Why, to get married," replied the mate, reddening. "I was telling you. Her father's willing, as long as we wait till I get a command before we splice."

"You to marry Minnie!" The mate stiffened at the emphasis on the "you." The Captain was fighting for expression. "Why," he said, "why —why, you'ld 'a' carried away that hawser if I hadn't sung out at ye."

"Father," said the mate. "Mr. Davis'll give me a ship."

"What ship?" demanded the Captain.

"The first he can," replied the other. "He's thinkin' of buyin' the Stormberg, Wrench Wylie's big freighter, and he'd shift you on to her. Then I'd have the Burdock."

"Then you'd have the Burdock!" The Captain leaned his elbow on the engine-room telegraph and faced his son. His expression was wholly compounded of perplexity and surprise. He let his eyes wander aft, along the big ship's trim perspective to the short poop, and forward to where her bluff bows sawed at the skyline.

"She's a fine old boat," he said at last, and stood up with a sigh. "but she needs watching." The mate felt a thrill of relief. "I'll watch her," he said comfortably. "But don't you want to wish me luck, father?"

"Not luck," said the Captain; "not luck, my boy. You run her to a hair and keep your eyes slit and you won't want luck. Luck's a lubber's standby. But Minnie's a fine girl." He shook his head thoughtfully. "She'll rouse you up, maybe."

The mate laughed, and at the sound of it the Captain frowned again.

"Now, lean off that binnacle," he said shortly. "I want to get the bearings."

It was not till an hour later that he went to his cabin to shed his shore-going gear for ordinary apparel; and as soon as this was done he reached down the register from the book-shelf over his bunk to look up the Stormberg.

"H'm," he growled, standing over the book at his desk. "Built in 1889 on the Clyde. I know her style. Five thousand tons, and touch the steam steering-gear if you dare! Blast her, and blast Davis for a junk-buying fool!"

He closed the book with a slam and glanced mechanically up at the tell-tale compass that hung over his bed.

"There's Arthur half a point off already," he said, and made for the bridge.

Arthur Price believed honestly that more was exacted from him than from other chief mates; and early in that passage he concluded that the Old Man was severer than ever. The Burdock butted into a summer gale before she was clear of the Bristol Channel, a free wind that came from the south-west driving a biggish sea before it. It was nothing to give real trouble, but Captain Price took charge in the dog watch and set the mate and his men to making all fast about decks. With his sou'wester flapped back from his forehead and his oilskin coat shrouding him to the heels, he leaned on the bridge rail, vociferous and imperative, and his harsh voice hunted the workers from one task to another. He had lashings on the anchors and fresh wedges to the battens of all hatches; the winches chocked off and covered over and new pins in the davit blocks. This took time, but when it was done he was not yet satisfied; the mate had to get out gear and rig a couple of preventer funnel stays. The men looked ahead at the weather and wondered what the skipper saw in it to make such a bother; the second and third mates winked at one another behind Arthur Price's back; and he, the chief mate, sulked.

"That's all, I suppose?" he asked the Captain when he got on the bridge again at last.

"No," was the sharp answer. "It's not all. Speak the engine-room and ask the chief how he's hitting it."

"All sweet," reported the mate as he hung up the speaking tube.

"That's right," said the Captain. "You always want to know that, Mister Mate. And the lights?"

"All bright, sir," said the mate.

"Then you can go down and get something to eat," said the Captain. "And see that the hand wheel's clear as you go."

It breezed up that night, and as the Burdock cleared the tail of Cornwall, the heavy Atlantic water came aboard. She was a sound ship, though, and Captain Price knew her as he knew the palms of his hands. Screened behind the high weather-cloths, he drove her into it, while the tall seas filled her forward main deck rail-deep and her bows pounded away in a mast-high smother of spray. From the binnacle amidships to the weather wing of the bridge was his dominion, while the watch officer straddled down to leeward; both with eyes boring at the darkness ahead and on either beam, where there came and went the pin-point lights of ships.

Arthur Price relieved the bridge at midnight, but the Captain held on.

"Ye see how she takes it?" he bawled down the wind to his son. "No excuse for steaming wide; ye can drive her to a hair. Keep your eyes on that light to port; we don't want anything bumping into us."

"You wouldn't ease her a bit, then?" shouted the mate, the wind snatching his words.

"Ease her!" was the reply. "You'd have her edging into France. She'll lie her course while we drive her."

When dawn came up the sea had mounted; the Bay was going to be true to its name. Captain Price went to his chart-house at midnight, to sleep on a settle; but by his orders the Burdock was kept to her course and her gait, battering away at the gale contentedly.

After breakfast, he took another look round and then went below to rest in his bunk, while the tell-tale swam in wild eccentrics above his upturned face. After a while he dozed off to sleep, lulled by the click of furnishings that rendered to the ship's roll, the drum of the seas on her plates, and the swish of loose water across the deck.

He was roused by his steward. That menial laid a hand on his shoulder and he was forthwith awake and competent.

"A ship to windward, sir, showin' flags," said the steward. "The mate 'ud be glad if you'd go to the bridge."

"A' right," said the Captain, and stood up. "In distress, eh?"

"By the looks of her, sir," admitted the steward, who had been a waiter ashore. "She seems to be a mast or two short, sir, so far as I can tell. But I couldn't be sure."

He helped the Captain into his oilskins deftly, pulling his jacket down under the long coat, and held the door open for him.

Some three miles to windward the stranger lay, an appealing vagabond. The Captain found his son standing on the flag-chest, braced against a stanchion, watching her through a pair of glasses, when she peeped up, a momentary silhouette, over the tall seas. He turned as the Captain approached.

"Can't make out her flags, sir," he said. "Too much wind. Looks like a barque with only her mizzen standing."

"Gimme the glass," said the Captain, climbing up beside him. He braced himself against the irons and took a look at her, swinging accurately to the roll of the ship. Beneath him the wind-whipped water tumbled in grey leagues; the stranger seemed poised on the rim of it. From her gaff, a dot of a flag showed a blur against the sky, and a string from her mast-head was equally vague.

"That'll be her ensign upside down at the gaff," he said. "Port your helm there; we'll go down and look at her."

"Aye, aye, sir." The mate passed the word and came over. "How would it be to see one of the boats clear, father!"

"Aren't the boats clear?" demanded the Captain.

"Oh yes, they're clear," replied the mate. "You had us put new pins in the blocks, you know." He met his father's steady eye defiantly. "When are a steamer's boats ever clear for hoisting out?" he asked.

"Always, when the mate's fit for his job," was the answer. "Go and make sure of the starboard lifeboat, and call the watch."

The Captain took his ship round to windward of the distressed vessel, running astern of her within a quarter of a mile. She proved to be the remains of a barque, as the mate had guessed, a deep-laden wooden ship badly swept by the sea. From the wing of the bridge the Captain's glasses showed him the length of her deck, cluttered with the wreck of houses torn up by the roots, while the fall of the spars had taken her starboard bulwarks with it. Her boats were gone; a davit stuck up at the end of the poop crumpled like a ram's horn; and by the taffrail her worn and sodden crew clustered and cheered the Burdock.

The Captain rang off his engines and rang again to stand by in the engine-room. The mate came up the ladder to him while his hand was yet at the telegraph.

"Lifeboat's all clear for lowering, sir," he said. "Noble, Peters, Hansen, and Kyland are to go in her." He waited.

The old captain stood looking at the wreck, while the steamship rolled tumultuously in the trough.

"Who goes in charge?" he asked, after a minute's silence.

"I'll go, father," said the mate eagerly. He paused, but the Captain said nothing.

"You know," proceeded the mate, "father, you do know there's none of 'em here can handle a boat like me."

"Aye," said the Captain, "you can do it." He looked at his son keenly. "It 'ud make a good yarn to spin to Minnie," he said, with an unwilling smile.

The mate laughed agreeably. "Dear Minnie," he said. "Then I'll go, father."

"And I'll just see to the hoisting out of that boat," said the Captain. "Good thing I had you put in the new pins."

The third mate on the bridge rang for steam and made a lee for the lowering of the lifeboat, the hands put a strain on the tackles, and the carpenter and bo'sun went to work to knock out the chocks on which she rested. Her steel-shod keel had rusted into them.

"Hoist away on your forward tackle," ordered the Captain. "Belay! Make fast! Now get a hold of this guy. Lively there, you men. Noble, aloft on the booms and shoulder her over."

She canted clear of the groove in the chocks as they swung the forward davit out and the Captain stepped abaft the men who hauled.

"Lively now," he called. "Don't keep those chaps waiting, men. After davit tackle, haul! Up with her."

The bo'sun, stooping, looped the fall of the tackle into the snatch- block; the men, under the Captain's eye, tumbled to and gave way, holding the weight gallantly as the rail swung down and putting their backs into the pull as she rolled back.

"Up with her!" shouted the Captain, and she tore loose from her bed. "Vast hauling! Belay! Now out with the davit, men."

He stepped a pace forward as they passed out the line. "Haul away," he was saying, when the bo'sun shouted hoarsely and tried to reach him with a dash across the slippery deck planks. The mate screamed, the Captain humped his shoulders for the blow. It all happened in a flash of disaster; the boat's weight pulled the pin from the cheeks of the block and down she came, her stern thudding thickly into the deck, while the Captain, limp and senseless, rolled inertly to the scuppers.

When he came to he was in his bunk. He opened his eyes with a shiver upon the familiar cabin, with its atmosphere of compact neatness, its gleaming paint and bright-work. A throb of brutal pain in his head wrung a grunt from him, and then he realized that something was wrong with his right arm. He tried to move it, to bring it above the bedclothes to look at it, and the effort surprised an oath from him, and left him dizzy and shaking. The white jacket of the steward came through a mist that was about him.

"Better, I hope, sir?" the steward was saying. "Beggin' your pardon, but you'd better lie still, sir. Is there anything I could bring you, sir?"

"Did the boat fall on me?" asked the Captain, carefully. His voice seemed thin to himself.

"Not on you, sir," replied the steward. "Not so to speak, on top of you. The keel 'it you on the shoulder, sir, an' you contracted a thump on the 'ead."

"And the wreck?" asked the Captain.

"The wreck's crew is aboard, sir; barque Vavasour, of London, sir. The mate brought 'em off most gallantly, sir. I was to tell 'im when you come to, sir."

"Tell him, then," said the Captain, and closed his eyes wearily. The pain in his head blurred his thoughts, but his lifelong habit of waking from sleep to full consciousness, with no twilight of muddled faculties intervening, held good yet. He remembered, now, the new pins in the blocks, and there was even a tincture of amusement in his reflections. A soft tread beside him made him open his eyes.

"Well, Arthur," he said.

The tall young mate was beside him.

"Ah, father," he said cheerfully. "Picking up a bit, eh? That's good. Ugly accident, that."

"Yes," replied the Captain, looking up into his face. "Block split, I suppose?"

"Yes," said the mate. "That's it. How do you feel?"

"You didn't notice the block, I suppose, when you put the new pins in?" asked the Captain.

"Can't say I did," answered the mate, "or I'd have changed it. You're not going to blame me surely, father?"

The Captain smiled. "No, Arthur, I'm not going to blame you," he said. "I want to hear how you brought off that barque's crew. Is it a good yarn for Minnie?"

At Barcelona the Captain went to hospital and they took off his right arm at the shoulder. The Burdock went back without him, and he lay in his bed wondering how it was that the loss of an arm should make a man feel lonely.

He was quickly about again. His body was clean from the bone out, clean and hard, and he had never been ill. When the time came to take a walk, he arrayed himself in shore-going black. It cost him an infinity of trouble and more than an hour of the morning to dress himself with one hand, but he would not have help. Then it was that he discovered a strange thing; it was his right arm, the arm that was gone, that hindered him. The scars of the amputation had healed, but unless he bore the fact deliberately in mind, he felt the arm to be there. He tried to button his braces with it, to knot his tie, to lace his boots, and had to overtake the impulse and correct it with an effort. When his clothes were on, he put his right hand in his trousers pocket, then remembered that it was not there, and withdrew hastily the hand he had not got. During the walk the same trouble remained with him; it muddled him when he bought tobacco and tried to pick up the change. Before he slept that night, he dropped on his knees at his bedside, and folded the left hand of flesh against the right hand of dreamstuff in prayer.

When his time came to go home in the Burdock, he was an altered man. The quiet, all-observant scrutiny had gone, and the officers who greeted him as he came up the accommodation ladder saw it at once. Arthur Price was now in command, a breezy, good-looking captain in blue serge and gold braid.