man, Happy Fear had brought him, having
found him wandering dazedly in a field near by. These lapses grew more
frequent, until there occurred that which was one of the strange things
of his life.

It was a June night, a little more than two years after his return to
Canaan, and the Tocsin had that day announced the approaching marriage
of Eugene Bantry and his employer's daughter. Joe ate nothing during
the day, and went through his work clumsily, visiting the bedroom shelf
at intervals. At ten in the evening he went out to have the jug
refilled, but from the moment he left his door and the fresh air struck
his face, he had no clear knowledge of what he did or of what went on
about him until he woke in his bed the next morning.

And yet, whatever little part of the soul of him remained, that night,
still undulled, not numbed, but alive, was in some strange manner
lifted out of its pain towards a strange delight. His body was an
automaton, his mind in bondage, yet there was a still, small
consciousness in him which knew that in his wandering something
incredible and unexpected was happening. What this was he did not
know, could not see, though his eyes were open, could not have told
himself any more than a baby could tell why it laughs, but it seemed
something so beautiful and wonderful that the night became a night of
perfume, its breezes bearing the music of harps and violins, while
nightingales sang from the maples that bordered the streets of Canaan.

X

THE TRYST

He woke to the light of morning amazed and full of a strange wonder
because he did not know what had amazed him. For a little while after
his eyes opened, he lay quite motionless; then he lifted his head
slightly and shook it with some caution. This had come to be custom.
The operation assured him of the worst; the room swam round him, and,
with a faint groan, he let his head fall back upon the pillow. But he
could not sleep again; pain stung its way through his heart as memory
began to come back to him, not of the preceding night--that was all
blank,--but realization that the girl of whom he had dreamed so long
was to be married. That his dreams had been quite hopeless was no balm
to his hurt.

A chime of bells sounded from a church steeple across the Square,
ringing out in assured righteousness, summoning the good people who
maintained them to come and sit beneath them or be taken to task; and
they fell so dismally upon Joe's ear tha