y, Miss Grierson took
the roundabout way between the Raymer plant and Mereside, making the
circuit which took her through the college grounds and brought her out
at the head of upper Shawnee Street. The Widow Holcomb was sitting on
her front porch, placidly crocheting, when the phaeton drew up at the
curb.

"Mr. Griswold," said the phaeton's occupant. "May I trouble you to tell
him that I'd like to speak to him a moment?"

Mrs. Holcomb, friend of the Raymers, the Farnhams, and the Oswalds, and
own cousin to the Barrs, was of the perverse minority; and, apart from
this, she had her own opinion of a young woman who would wait at the
door of a young man's boarding-house and take him off for a night drive
to goodness only knew where, and from which he did not return until
goodness only knew when. So there was no stitch missed in the crocheting
when she said, stiffly: "Mr. Griswold isn't in. He hasn't been home
since morning."

Miss Grierson drove on, and the most casual observer might have remarked
the strained tightening of the lips and the two red spots which came and
went in the damask-peach cheeks. But it was not until she had reached
Mereside, and had gained the shelter of the deserted library, that
speech came.

"O pitiful Christ!" she sobbed, dropping into a chair and hiding her
face in the crook of her arm; "he's done it at last!--he's trying to
hide, and that's what they've been waiting for! _And I don't know where
to look!_"

But Matthew Broffin, tilting lazily in his chair on the down-town hotel
porch, knew very well where to look, and he was watching the one outlet
of the hiding-place as an alert, though outwardly disregardful,
house-cat watches a mouse's hole.

XXXVII

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

On no less an authority than that of the great doctor who came again
from Chicago for a second consultation with Doctor Farnham, Andrew
Galbraith owed his life during the two days following his return to
consciousness to the unremitting care and devotion of one person.

Seconding the efforts of the physicians, and skilfully directing those
of the nurses, Margery threw herself into the vicarious struggle with
the generous self-sacrifice which counts neither cost nor loss; and on
the third day she had her reward. Her involuntary guest and charge was
distinctly better, and again, so the two doctors declared, the balance
was inclining slightly toward recovery.

It was in the afternoon of this third day, whe