glanced down, and a blush, sudden and deep, spread over her
features. The young man lost nothing of all this, but with alert
analysis took every expression and action in.

"May I become your friend if greater need arises, Agnes? Do not repulse
me. At the worst--I swear it!--I will be your instrument, your subject."

Agnes sat in the renewed pallor of profound fear. God, on whom she had
but a moment before called, seemed to have withdrawn His face. Her black
ringlets, smoothed upon her noble brow in wavy lines, gave her something
of a Roman matron's look; her eyebrows, dark as the eyes beneath that
now shrank back yet shone the larger, might have befitted an Eastern
queen. Lips of unconscious invitation, and features produced in their
wholeness which bore out a character too perfect not to have lived
sometime in the realms of the great tragedies of life, made Agnes in her
sorrow peerless yet.

"Go, Calvin!" she said, with an effort, her eyes still upon the floor;
"if you would ever do me any aid, go now!"

As he passed into the passageway Calvin Van de Lear ran against a man
with a crutch and a wooden leg, who looked at him from under a head of
dark-red hair, and in a low voice cursed his awkwardness. The man bent
to pick up his crutch, and Calvin observed that he was badly scarred and
had one eyebrow higher than the other.

"Who are you, fellow?" asked Calvin, surprised.

"I'm Dogcatcher!" said the man. "When ye see me coming, take the other
side of the street."

Calvin felt cowed, not so much at these mysterious words as at a hard,
lowering look in the man's face, like especial dislike.

Agnes Wilt, still sitting in the parlor, saw the lame servant pass her
door, going out, and he looked in and touched his hat, and paused a
minute. Something graceful and wistful together seemed to be in his
bearing and countenance.

"Anything for me?" asked Agnes.

"Nothing at all, mum! When there's nobody by to do a job, call on Mike."

He still seemed to tarry, and in Agnes's nervous condition a mysterious
awe came over her; the man's gaze had a dread fascination that would not
let her drop her eyes. As he passed out of sight and shut the street
door behind him Agnes felt a fainting feeling, as if an apparition had
looked in upon her and vanished--the apparition, if of anything, of him
who had lain dead in that very parlor--the stern, enamored master of the
house whose fatherhood in a fateful moment had turned to marital