f to bear his destiny as well as he might, and
report himself only at Headquarters.

He had grown gentle under this discipline. His hair was just beginning
to be touched with silver, and his expression was that of habitual
sadness and anxiety. He had no counsellor, as we have seen, to turn to,
who did not know either too much or too little. He had no heart to rest
upon and into which he might unburden himself of the secrets and the
sorrows that were aching in his own breast. Yet he had not allowed
himself to run to waste in the long time since he was left alone to
his trials and fears. He had resisted the seductions which always beset
solitary men with restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies.
He disguised no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He
sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open
eyes through all the weary hours of the night.

It was understood between Dudley Veneer and old Doctor Kittredge that
Elsie was a subject of occasional medical observation, on account of
certain mental peculiarities which might end in a permanent affection of
her reason. Beyond this nothing was said, whatever may have been in the
mind of either. But Dudley Veneer had studied Elsie's case in the
light of all the books he could find which might do anything towards
explaining it. As in all cases where men meddle with medical science
for a special purpose, having no previous acquaintance with it, his
imagination found what it wanted in the books he read, and adjusted it
to the facts before him. So it was he came to cherish those two fancies
before alluded to that the ominous birthmark she had carried from
infancy might fade and become obliterated, and that the age of complete
maturity might be signalized by an entire change in her physical and
mental state. He held these vague hopes as all of us nurse our only
half-believed illusions. Not for the world would he have questioned his
sagacious old medical friend as to the probability or possibility of
their being true. We are very shy of asking questions of those who know
enough to destroy with one word the hopes we live on.

In this life of comparative seclusion to which the father had doomed
himself for the sake of his child, he had found time for large and
varied reading. The learned Judge Thornton confessed himself surprised
at the extent of Dudley Veneer's information. Doctor Kittredge found
that he was in advance of him in the kno