the station as McCall passed
them. "Is here for repose."

"Advanced?" said little Herr Bluhm, the phrenologist.

"Well, no. But Doctor Maria thinks his mind is open to conviction,
and that he would prove a strong worker should he remain here. She
has already begun to enlighten him on our newest theories as to a
Spontaneous Creation and a Consolidated Republic."

"Should think his properer study would be potatoes. Smells of the
barn-yard in his talk," rejoined one of the party.

"Doctor Maria's a fool!" snapped Bluhm. "She has read the index to
Bastian's book, and denies her Creator, and gabbles of Bacteria,
boiled and unboiled, ever since."

Doctor McCall meanwhile went down the cinder-path, to all passers-by
a clean-shaven, healthy gentleman out in search of an appetite for
breakfast. But in reality he was deciding his whole life in that brief
walk. Why, he asked himself once or twice, should he be unlike the
other clean-shaven, healthy men that he met? God knows he had no
relish for mystery. He was, as he had told Kitty, a commonplace man, a
thrifty Delaware farmer, in hearty good-fellowship with his neighbors,
his cattle, the ground he tilled, and, he thought reverently, with
the God who had made him and them. He had made a mistake in his early
youth, but it was a mistake which every tenth man makes--which had no
doubt driven half these men and women about him into their visionary
creeds and hard work--that of an unhappy marriage. It was many years
since he had heard of his wife: she had grown tired of warning him of
the new paths of shame and crime she had found for herself. In fact,
the year in which they had lived together was now so long past as to
seem like a miserable half-forgotten dream.

Irretrievable? Yes, it was irretrievable. There was, first of all,
the stupid, boyish error of a change of name. If he came back as this
child wished, all the annoyance which that entailed would follow him,
and the humiliating circumstances which had led to it would be brought
to life from their unclean graves. His father believed him dead.
Better the quiet, softened grief which that had left than the disgrace
which would follow his return. "I should have to tell him my wife's
story," muttered McCall. But he did not turn pale nor break into a
cold sweat at the remembrance, as Miss Muller's hero should have done.
This was an old sore--serious enough, but one which he meant to make
the best of, according to his habit. H