the Railway
Directors at Montreal declared were masterpieces.

When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in
Lebanon. Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there
was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence.
Nathan Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it
again. To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book.
He regarded them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism. He
never forgot that his own trouble could and would have been avoided had
it not been for woman's vanity and consequent cruelty. The unwholesome
three had shared his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no
sense victims of his; but, disregarding their responsibility, they had,
from sheer jealousy, wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had
wrecked themselves as well. They were of those who act first and then
think--too late.

Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but
thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a
heart. They came to him with their troubles--even the women of Manitou
who ought to have gone to the priest.

He moved about Lebanon as one who had authority, and desired not to use
it; as one to whom life was like a case in surgery to be treated with
scientific, coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sympathy; yet
the early morning of the day after Ingolby had had his accident at
Barbazon's Hotel found him the slave of an emotion which shook him
from head to foot. He had saved his friend's life by a most skilful
operation, but he had been shocked beyond control when, an hour after
the operation was over, and consciousness returned to the patient in the
brilliantly lighted room, Ingolby said:

"Why don't you turn on the light?"

It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, the friend of Lebanon
and Manitou, was stone blind. When Ingolby's voice ceased, a horrified
silence filled the room for a moment. Even Jim Beadle, his servant,
standing at the foot of the bed, clapped a hand to his mouth to stop a
cry, and the nurse turned as white as the apron she wore.

Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant professional presence of mind
he said:

"No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a while yet." Then he whipped
out a silk handkerchief from his pocket. "We will have light," he
continued, "but we must bandage you first to keep out the glare and
prevent