of. He
is the apple of his father's eye. They were inseparable, those two. Do
you know the father, Mr. Madden?"

Theron shook his head. "I think I have seen him," he said. "A small man,
with gray whiskers."

"A peasant," said Father Forbes, "but with a heart of gold. Poor man! he
has had little enough out of his riches. Ah, the West Coast people, what
tragedies I have seen among them over here! They have rudimentary lung
organizations, like a frog's, to fit the mild, wet soft air they live
in. The sharp air here kills them off like flies in a frost. Whole
families go. I should think there are a dozen of old Jeremiah's children
in the cemetery. If Michael could have passed his twenty-eighth year,
there would have been hope for him, at least till his thirty-fifth.
These pulmonary things seem to go by sevens, you know."

"I didn't know," said Theron. "It is very strange--and very sad." His
startled mind was busy, all at once, with conjectures as to Celia's age.

"The sister--Miss Madden--seems extremely strong," he remarked
tentatively.

"Celia may escape the general doom," said the priest. His guest noted
that he clenched his shapely white hand on the table as he spoke, and
that his gentle, carefully modulated voice had a gritty hardness in its
tone. "THAT would be too dreadful to think of," he added.

Theron shuddered in silence, and strove to shut his mind against the
thought.

"She has taken Michael's illness so deeply to heart," the priest
proceeded, "and devoted herself to him so untiringly that I get a little
nervous about her. I have been urging her to go away and get a change of
air and scene, if only for a few days. She does not sleep well, and that
is always a bad thing."

"I think I remember her telling me once that sometimes she had sleepless
spells," said Theron. "She said that then she banged on her piano at
all hours, or dragged the cushions about from room to room, like a wild
woman. A very interesting young lady, don't you find her so?"

Father Forbes let a wan smile play on his lips. "What, our Celia?"
he said. "Interesting! Why, Mr. Ware, there is no one like her in the
world. She is as unique as--what shall I say?--as the Irish are among
races. Her father and mother were both born in mud-cabins, and she--she
might be the daughter of a hundred kings, except that they seem mostly
rather under-witted than otherwise. She always impresses me as a sort of
atavistic idealization of the old Kelt at