in this
man's errand, she cried out with smothered intensity, "Go! go! I cannot
stay another moment from his bedside."

But a thunderbolt could not have moved Sweetwater after the hearing of
that name. "Mr. Brotherson!" he echoed. "Brotherson! Not Orlando?"

"No, no; his name is Oswald. He's the manager of these Works. He's sick
with typhoid. We are caring for him. If you belonged here you would know
that much. There! that's his voice you hear. Go, if you have any mercy."
And she began to push to the door.

But Sweetwater was impervious to all hint. With eager eyes straining
into the shadowy depths just visible over her shoulder, he listened
eagerly for the disjointed words now plainly to be heard in some near-by
but unseen chamber.

"The second O. B.!" he inwardly declared. "And he's a Brotherson also,
and--sick! Miss Scott," he whisperingly entreated as her hand fell in
manifest despair from the door, "don't send me away yet. I've a question
of the greatest importance to put you, and one minute more cannot make
any difference to him. Listen! those cries are the cries of delirium; he
cannot miss you; he's not even conscious."

"He's calling out in his sleep. He's calling her, just as he has called
for the last two weeks. But he will wake conscious--or he will not wake
at all."

The anguish trembling in that latter phrase would have attracted
Sweetwater's earnest, if not pitiful, attention at any other time,
but now he had ears only for the cry which at that moment came ringing
shrilly from within--

"Edith! Edith!"

The living shouting for the dead! A heart still warm sending forth its
longing to the pierced and pulseless one, hidden in a far-off tomb!
To Sweetwater, who had seen Miss Challoner buried, this summons of
distracted love came with weird force.

Then the present regained its sway. He heard her name again, and this
time it sounded less like a call and more like the welcoming cry of
meeting spirits. Was death to end this separation? Had he found the
true O. B., only to behold another and final seal fall upon this closely
folded mystery? In his fear of this possibility, he caught at Doris'
hand as she was about to bound away, and eagerly asked:

"When was Mr. Brotherson taken ill? Tell me, I entreat you; the exact
day and, if you can, the exact hour. More depends upon this than you can
readily realise."

She wrenched her hand from his, panting with impatience and a vague
alarm. But she answered