out."

There was a silence. Then Buntingford added:

"If these kind people would keep her, it would be the best solution.
I would make everything easy for them. To-morrow I go up to Town--to
the address she has given me. And--I should be glad if you would
come with me?"

The doctor looked surprised.

"Of course--if you want me--"

"The boy--his mother says--is abnormal--deficient. An injury at birth. If
you will accompany me I shall know better what to do."

A grasp of the hand, a look of sympathy answered; and they parted.
Buntingford emerged from the little Rectory to find Alcott again waiting
for him in the garden. The sun had set some time and the moon was peering
over the hills to the east. The mounting silver rim suddenly recalled to
Buntingford the fairy-like scene of the night before?--the searchlight on
the lake, the lights, the music, and the exquisite figure of Helena
dancing through it all. Into what Vale of the Shadow of Death had he
passed since then?--

Alcott and he turned into the plantation walk together. Various practical
arrangements were discussed between them. Alcott and his sister would
keep the sick woman in their house as long as might be necessary, and
Buntingford once more expressed his gratitude.

Then, under the darkness of the trees, and in reaction from the
experience he had just passed through, an unhappy man's hitherto
impenetrable reserve, to some extent, broke down. And the companion
walking beside him showed himself a true minister of Christ---humble,
tactful, delicate, yet with the courage of his message. What struck him
most, perhaps, was the revelation of what must have been Buntingford's
utter loneliness through long years; the spiritual isolation in which a
man of singularly responsive and confiding temper had passed perhaps a
quarter of his life, except for one blameless friendship with a woman now
dead. His utmost efforts had not been able to discover the wife who had
deserted him, or to throw any light upon her subsequent history. The law,
therefore, offered him no redress. He could not free himself; and he
could not marry again. Yet marriage and fatherhood were his natural
destiny, thwarted by the fatal mistake of his early youth. Nothing
remained but to draw a steady veil over the past, and to make what he
could of the other elements in life.

Alcott gathered clearly from the story that there had been no other woman
or women in the case, since his rupture with hi