* * * * *

Life at Heartholm went on very much the same. The tender-hearted
observer might have noted that the gardens held the same flowers year
after year, all the perennials and hardy blooms John Strang had loved.
No matter what had been his widow's courageous acceptance of modern
stoicism, the prevailing idea that incurable grief is merely "morbid,"
yet, in their own apartments where their own love had been lived, was
every mute image and eloquent trifle belonging to its broken arc. Here,
with Strang's books on occult science, with other books of her own
choosing, the wife lived secretly, unknown of any other human being, the
long vigil of waiting for some sign or word from the spirit of one who
by every token of religion and faith she could not believe dead--only to
her wistful earthly gaze, hidden. She also hid in her heart one
strangely persistent hope--namely, Gargoyle! Letters from Doctor Milton
had been full of significance. The last letter triumphantly concluded:

Your young John Strang Berber, alias Gargoyle, can talk now, with
only one drawback: as yet he doesn't know any words!

The rapidly aging mother at the gardener's cottage took worldly pride in
what was happening to her youngest.

"I allus knowed he was smart," the woman insisted. "My Johnny! To think
of him speaking his mind out like any one else! I allus took his part--I
could ha' told 'em he had his own notions!"

There was no doubt as to Gargoyle's having the "notions." As the slow
process of speech was taught and the miracle of fitting words to things
was given unto John Berber, alias Gargoyle, it was hard for those
watching over him to keep the riotous perceptions from retarding the
growing mechanistics. Close-mouthed the boy was, and, they said, always
would be; but watchful eyes and keen intuitions penetrated to the silent
orgies going on within him. So plainly did the fever of his education
begin to wear on his physical frame that wary Doctor Mach shook his
head. "Here I find too many streams of thought coursing through one
field," said the careful Swiss. "The field thus grows stony and bears
nothing. Give this field only one stream that shall be nourishing."

For other supernormal developments that "one stream" might have been
music or sports. For Gargoyle it happened to be flowers. The botanist
with whom he was sent afield not only knew his science, but guessed at
more than his science. His were the beat