her ticket, checked her trunk, and put her foot on
the step as the train started.

Waving a good-by to the faithful servant, who still lingered, she passed
into the car and sank down into a seat. She watched the valley, beautiful
in amethyst lights, flit past the window; then Sefton Falls, flanked by
misty hills, came into sight and disappeared. At last all the familiar
country of the moving panorama was blotted out by the darkness, and she
was alone.

Her eyes dropped to the ticket in her lap. Why she had chosen that
destination she could not have told. It would, however, serve as well as
another. If in future she was to be forever cut off from all she loved on
earth, what did it matter where she went?

CHAPTER XVII

THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE

After Lucy left the office, Mr. Benton sat for an interval thinking. Then
he yawned, stretched his arms, went to his desk drawer, and took out the
will which he slipped into his waistcoat pocket.

With hands behind him he took a turn or two across the room.

He was a man not lacking in feeling, and impulses of sympathy and mercy
until now had deterred him from the execution of his legal duties. Since,
however, it was Lucy Webster who had rung up the curtain on the drama in
which an important part had been assigned him, there was no need for him
to postpone longer the playing of his role. He had received his cue.

His lines, he admitted, were not wholly to his liking--not, in fact, to
his liking at all; he considered them cruel, unfair, vindictive.
Notwithstanding this, however, the plot was a novel one, and he was too
human not to relish the fascinating uncertainties it presented. In all his
professional career no case so remarkable had fallen to his lot before.

When as a young man he had attacked his calling, he had been thrilled with
enthusiasm and hope. The law had seemed to him the noblest of professions.
But the limitations of a small town had quickly dampened his ardor, and
instead of righting the injustices of the world as he had once dreamed of
doing, he had narrowed into a legal machine whose mechanism was never
accelerated by anything more stirring than a round of petty will-makings,
land-sellings, bill collections and mortgage foreclosures.

But at last here was something out of the ordinary, a refreshing and
unique human comedy that would not only electrify the public but whose
chief actors balked all speculation. He could not help owning that Ellen
We