mmer night.

"You know," said Maria when she could speak, "how we deceived my people
in Wales and in London. None of my family here know anything about that
marriage."

Another voice outside the walls, keen with anxiety, shouted her name.
Dr. Dunlap hurried a few yards from her, then stopped and held his
ground. A man rushed into the old building regardless of the broken
floor.

"Maria, are you here?"

"Yes, brother Rice."

She was leaving her corner to meet him. The doctor could see that she
sunk to her hands and knees with weakness and helped herself up by the
wall.

"Where are you? Is any one with you?"

As they met in the darkness the brother felt her hands and trembling
figure.

"What possessed you to sit down here in this damp old place? You are
clammy as stone. Poor little thing, were you frightened? What have you
been doing?"

"I have been talking," replied Maria.

The doctor's heart labored like a drum. Perhaps she would tell it all
out to Rice Jones now.

The same acrid restraint may be heard in a mother's voice when she
inquires, as Rice did,--

"Who was talking with you?"

"Dr. Dunlap."

"Dr. Dunlap? You don't know Dr. Dunlap."

"We met in England," daringly broke out Dr. Dunlap himself.

"He is here yet, is he?" said Rice Jones. "Doctors are supposed to be
the natural protectors of ailing women; but here's one that is helping a
sick girl to take her death cold."

An attack on his professional side was what Dr. Dunlap was not prepared
for. He had nothing to say, and Maria's brother carried her out of the
old college and took the nearest way home.

Noise was ceasing around the sinking bonfire, a clatter of wooden shoes
setting homeward along the streets of Kaskaskia. Maria saw the stars
stretching their great network downward enmeshing the Mississippi. That
nightly vision is wonderful. But what are outward wonders compared to
the unseen spiritual chemistry always at work within and around us,
changing our loves and beliefs and needs?

Rice stopped to rest as soon as they were out of Dr. Dunlap's hearing.
Light as she was, he felt his sister's complete prostration in her
weight.

"For God's sake, Maria," he said to her in Welsh,--"is that fellow
anything to you?"

She shook her head.

"But he says he met you in England."

She said nothing, and Rice also remained in silence. When he spoke
again, it was in the tone of dry statement which he used for presenting
cases in court.