from which there was no escape was in
her look, her manner, her voice. She was listless, apathetic, calm with
the calmness of a woman who knows she can suffer no further.

"We are going away," she told Presley, as the two sat down at opposite
ends of the dining table. "Just Magnus and myself--all there is left
of us. There is very little money left; Magnus can hardly take care of
himself, to say nothing of me. I must look after him now. We are going
to Marysville."

"Why there?"

"You see," she explained, "it happens that my old place is vacant in
the Seminary there. I am going back to teach--literature." She smiled
wearily. "It is beginning all over again, isn't it? Only there is
nothing to look forward to now. Magnus is an old man already, and I must
take care of him."

"He will go with you, then," Presley said, "that will be some comfort to
you at least."

"I don't know," she said slowly, "you have not seen Magnus lately."

"Is he--how do you mean? Isn't he any better?"

"Would you like to see him? He is in the office. You can go right in."

Presley rose. He hesitated a moment, then:

"Mrs. Annixter," he asked, "Hilma--is she still with you? I should like
to see her before I go." "Go in and see Magnus," said Mrs. Derrick. "I
will tell her you are here."

Presley stepped across the stone-paved hallway with the glass roof,
and after knocking three times at the office door pushed it open and
entered.

Magnus sat in the chair before the desk and did not look up as Presley
entered. He had the appearance of a man nearer eighty than sixty. All
the old-time erectness was broken and bent. It was as though the muscles
that once had held the back rigid, the chin high, had softened and
stretched. A certain fatness, the obesity of inertia, hung heavy around
the hips and abdomen, the eye was watery and vague, the cheeks and chin
unshaven and unkempt, the grey hair had lost its forward curl towards
the temples and hung thin and ragged around the ears. The hawk-like
nose seemed hooked to meet the chin; the lips were slack, the mouth
half-opened.

Where once the Governor had been a model of neatness in his dress, the
frock coat buttoned, the linen clean, he now sat in his shirt sleeves,
the waistcoat open and showing the soiled shirt. His hands were stained
with ink, and these, the only members of his body that yet appeared to
retain their activity, were busy with a great pile of papers,--oblong,
legal documents, tha