e
form of a thought untranslated into any sluggish medium of language. He
should have been filled with a vague curiosity about that trouble she
had just presaged, yet now he knew wholly....

"Let us thank God that our sojourn ended within the bourne of His
peace!" was the thought exchanged as these two dutiful ones, cleared and
lightened for swift voyaging, turned their faces toward the Gates of the
Day.

On the earth they had left midnight was wearing toward morning--the
morning of August the First, Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen!

MESSENGERS[16]

[Note 16: Copyright, 1919, by The Curtis Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1920, by Calvin Johnston.]

From _The Saturday Evening Post_

BY CALVIN JOHNSTON

The group before the fire at the Engineers' Club were listening, every
one--though nothing was being said; nor was it the crackle of apple logs
or fluttering sails and drowning cries of the northeaster in the chimney
that preoccupied them. Rather some still, distant undertone in their own
breasts, arresting their conversation, gestures, thoughts--they glanced
at one another surreptitiously, uneasily.

"But listen--I am telling you," said old Con O'Connel, the railroad
builder, his voice rolling and sweet as the bells of Shandon: "To-night
I hear a footfall in the rain--that of Tim Cannon, the messenger."

So that was the undertone which had arrested their thoughts; the rush of
footfalls symbolizing to the group, every one, the pursuit of himself by
a belated messenger. They settled themselves, relieved and smiling;
after all the thing had been naturally suggested to them by the echo of
rain on the broad plate windows. And they nodded their heads to Con,
still listening.

The footfall of Tim Cannon, a name of ancient days on the P. D.
Railroad; but as the story does not concern him except as Molly Regan's
messenger I will leave him come into it in his own time and take up with
the Regans themselves.

Two of them there were to begin with--young Michael, swinging a lusty
pick in a construction gang of the Great Southwest Railway; and Molly, a
pretty bride with solemn wondering gaze and air of listening to things
which no one else could hear.

Often Mike would smile at her queer fancies that there are things to
learn and do beyond the day's work, and after the Great Southwest has
been builded and he has laid aside pick and shovel to become track boss
at Turntable Station this queerness of Molly's leads her