ace with the Black Half of life.

Kathrien was not in mourning. Her simple white dress caused no comment.
For, by this time, it was known she was acting on what she believed to
be Grimm's wishes. The dead man had ever had a loathing of all the
hideous visible trappings of grief. He had been wont to hold forth on
his aversion after every funeral he had been forced to attend.

"When it comes my time to fall asleep," he had said, during one of these
Philippics, "I don't want anybody that cares for me to make death
horrible by going around dressed like an undertaker. I'd as soon expect
a mother to put on black after she had kissed her child good-night.
There'd be just as much sense in it. If it's done because we're grieved
to think where our friends have gone,--well and good. But if we're
willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, why dress as if we were
sorry for them?"

Wherefore, Kathrien was wearing one of the white summer dresses he had
loved. She had timidly suggested that Frederik also honour the dead
man's prejudices. But the sad, reproachful look he had bent upon her at
her first hint of the subject had silenced the girl and had left her
half-convicted of heartlessness because of her own avoidance of black.

Willem was not at the funeral. After that first strange outburst on
learning that Grimm was dead, the child had said no word all day. At
night when Kathrien came to take him to bed, she found him in a high
fever.

Dr. McPherson had been sent for, and had examined the child closely, but
could find no palpable cause for the malady.

"He's an odd little fellow," he told Kathrien. "Like no other boy I've
ever known. The Scotch call such children 'fey' and prophesy short lives
for them. And the prophecy usually comes true. There's always been
something psychic about Willem. A hypnotist or a medium would look on
him as a treasure.

"All the diagnosis I can make is that Peter's death caused a shock to
the boy's never strong nerves and that the shock has caused the fever.
Keep him in bed for a few days. He'll probably come around all right.
There doesn't seem to be anything really serious--except that in a
constitution like his everything is apt to be more or less serious."

After the funeral, life went on outwardly much as before at the Grimm
home. The only change was the impalpable one which occurs in a room when
a clock stops.

And, in fulfilment of Peter Grimm's last request, preparations for the
"Ju