orshipped Alec. I used to hate
him for it. Oh, my heart has been very full of black thoughts in its
time, master. But neither Alec nor Mercedes ever knew. And I'm
thankful now that they were so happy. Alec made this arbour for
Mercedes--at least he made the trellis, and she planted the vines.

"She used to sit here most of the time in summer. I suppose that's why
I like to sit here. Her eyes would be dreamy and far-away until Alec
would flash his welcome. How that used to torture me! But now I like
to remember it. And her pretty soft foreign voice and little white
hands. She died after she had lived here a year. They buried her and
her baby in the graveyard of that little chapel over the harbour where
the bell rings every evening. She used to like sitting here and
listening to it. Alec lived a long while after, but he never married
again. He's gone now, and nobody remembers Mercedes but me."

Abel lapsed into a reverie--a tryst with the past which I would not
disturb. I thought he did not notice my departure, but as I opened the
gate he stood up and waved his hand.

Three days later I went again to the old garden by the harbour shore.
There was a red light on a distant sail. In the far west a sunset city
was built around a great deep harbour of twilight. Palaces were there
and bannered towers of crimson and gold. The air was full of music;
there was one music of the wind and another of the waves, and still
another of the distant bell from the chapel near which Mercedes slept.
The garden was full of ripe odours and warm colours. The Lombardies
around it were tall and sombre like the priestly forms of some mystic
band. Abel was sitting in the hop-vine arbour; beside him Captain
Kidd slept. I thought Abel was asleep, too; his head leaned against
the trellis and his eyes were shut.

But when I reached the arbour I saw that he was not asleep. There was
a strange, wise little smile on his lips as if he had attained to the
ultimate wisdom and were laughing in no unkindly fashion at our old
blind suppositions and perplexities.

Abel had gone on his Great Adventure.

Akin To Love

David Hartley had dropped in to pay a neighbourly call on Josephine
Elliott. It was well along in the afternoon, and outside, in the clear
crispness of a Canadian winter, the long blue shadows from the tall
firs behind the house were falling over the snow.

It was a frosty day, and all the windows of every room where there was
no fi