oated on the unbroken waves.

"'You look a little like yourself again; I'm so glad to see it!' Mary
said. 'There comes Mr. McKey. I wonder what brings him here.'

"I looked up, and saw, slowly walking on to the point at which Mary was
securing her boat, the possessor of the existence that had come into
mine. There was no way for me to flee, except seaward; and of two
suicides I chose the pleasanter, and I stayed.

"'Who is it, Mary?' I had time to question, and she to answer.

"'It is Bernard McKey; he has come to study medicine in papa's office;
he came the night Alice died.'

"He was too near to permit of questioning more, and so I stood upon the
seashore and saw my fate coming close.

"Mary simply said, 'Good evening,' to him, followed by the requisite
introductory words that form the basis of acquaintance.

"'I think Miss Axtell and I scarcely need an introduction,' he said;
nevertheless he looked the pleasure it had strewed into his field, and
guarded it, as a careful husbandman would choicest seed.

"He asked the style of question which monosyllables can never answer, to
which responding, one has to offer somewhat of herself; and all the
time of that sombre autumn, there grew from out the chasm of the
lightning-stroke luxuriant foliage. I gave it all the resistance of my
nature, yet I knew, as the consumptive knows, that I should be conquered
by my conqueror. It was only the old story of the captive polishing
chains to wear them away; and yet Mr. McKey was simply very civil and
intentionally kind, where he might have been courteously indifferent.
Abraham was away when Bernard McKey came to Redleaf. For more than
twelve months this terrible something had been working its power into
my soul. Yet we were not lovers,"--and Miss Axtell made the
_pronunciamiento_ as if she held the race mentioned in utmost
veneration. "Day by day brought to me new reasons why Bernard McKey must
be unto me only a medical student in Doctor Percival's office, and the
stars sealed all that the day had done; whilst no night of sky was
without a wandering comet, whereon was inscribed, in letters that
flashed every way, the sentence that came with the lightning-stroke;
even storms drowned it not; winter's cold did not freeze it. Verily,
little friend, _I know that God had put it into Creation for me, and yet
there seemed His own law written against it_"; and Miss Axtell's tones
grew very soft and tremulously low, as she said,--

"Mr.