ul of Crailey Gray had gone out upon the quest for the Holy Grail.

Miss Betty's hands clenched convulsively round the arm of the bench and
a fit of shuddering seized her as if with the grip of a violent chill,
though her eyes were dry. Then she lay quiet.

A long time afterward, she became aware of a step that paced the garden
path behind her, and turned her face upon her arm so that she saw, but
made no other motion. It was Tom Vanrevel, walking slowly up and down,
his hands behind his back and his hat pulled far down over his eyes. He
had not seen her.

She rose and spoke his name.

He turned and came to her. "Almost at the very last," he said, "Crailey
whispered to me that he knew you thought him a great scamp, but to tell
you to be sure to remember that it was all true about the stars."

CHAPTER XX. "Goodby"

It was between twilight and candlelight, the gentle half-hour when the
kind old Sand Man steals up the stairs of houses where children are;
when rustic lovers stroll with slow and quiet steps down country lanes,
and old bachelors are loneliest and dream of the things that might have
been. Through the silence of the clear dusk came the whistle of the
evening boat that was to bear Tom Vanrevel through the first stage of
his long journey to the front of war, and the sound fell cheerlessly
upon Miss Betty's ear, as she stood leaning against the sun-dial among
the lilac bushes. Her attitude was not one of reverie; yet she stood
very still, so still that, in the wan shimmer of the faded afterglow,
one might have passed close by her and not have seen her. The long, dark
folds of her gown showed faintly against the gray stone, and her arms,
bare from the elbow, lay across the face of the dial with unrelaxed
fingers clenching the cornice; her head drooping, not languidly but with
tension, her eyes half-closed, showing the lashes against a pale cheek;
and thus, motionless, leaning on the stone in the dusk, she might have
been Sorrow's self.

She did not move, there was not even a flicker of the eyelashes, when
a step sounded on the gravel of the driveway, and Vanrevel came slowly
from the house. He stopped at a little distance from her, hat in hand.
He was very thin, worn and old-looking, and in the failing light might
have been taken for a tall, gentle ghost; yet his shoulders were squared
and he held himself as straight as he had the first time she had ever
seen him.

"Mrs. Tanberry told me I should find