ed
scarcely able to find roothold on the straight fall of rock,--one tree
projecting just below the foundations of the inn, ten feet lower than
the lowest window, a knotted wild cherry, storm-beaten and crooked,--and
then, suddenly, something of uncertain shape, huddled together and
falling from the balcony down the precipice,--a woman's figure, caught
in the gnarled boughs of the cherry-tree, hanging and swinging over the
abyss, while shriek on shriek echoed down to the swollen torrent and up
to the turrets of the old inn in an agonized reverberation of horror.

It was a fearful memory, and the thought of being brought into the
company of the woman whose life I had seen so risked and so saved was
strange and fascinating. Often and often I had wondered about her fate,
speculating upon the question whether her fall was due to accident or to
the intention of suicide, and I had tried to realize the terrible waking
when she found herself saved from the destruction she sought by the man
I had seen,--perhaps by the very man from whom she was endeavoring to
escape. I was thrown off my balance by being so suddenly brought face to
face with this woman's son, the tall, blue-eyed, awkward fine gentleman,
Paul Patoff. I sat by the library fire and thought it all over, and I
said to myself at last, "Paul Griggs, thou art an ass for thy pains, and
an inquisitive idiot for thy curiosity." I, who am rarely out of conceit
with myself, was disgusted at my lack of dignity at actually desiring to
find out things that were in no way my business, nor ever concerned me.
So I took a book and fell to reading. Far off in the house I could hear
voices now and then, the voices of the family making the acquaintance of
their new-found relation. The great fire blazed upon the broad hearth
within, and the wintry sun shone brightly without, and there came
gradually upon me the delight of comfort that reigns within a luxurious
library when the frost is biting without, and there is no scent upon the
frozen fields,--the comfort that lies in the contrasts we make for
ourselves against nature; most of all, the peace that a wanderer on the
face of the earth, as I am, can feel when he rests his weary limbs in
some quiet home, half wishing he might at last be allowed to lay down
the staff and scrip, and taste freely of the world's good things, yet
knowing that before many days the devil of unrest will drive him forth
again upon his road. So I sat in John Carvel