gratefulness of this apparently poor and lonely old man, went after Mary
with all the pleasant ease and familiarity of an accepted lover, to help
her bring in the tea. The tiny "Charlie," meanwhile, sitting on the
hearth in a vigilantly erect attitude, with quivering nose pointed in a
creamward direction, waited for the approach of the expected afternoon
refreshment, trembling from head to tail with nervous excitement. And
Helmsley, left alone for those few moments, presently mastered the
strong emotion which made him long to tell his true history to the two
sincere souls who, out of his whole life's experience, had alone proved
themselves faithful to the spirit of a friendship wherein the claims of
cash had no part. Regaining full command of himself, and determining to
act out the part he had elected to play to whatever end should most
fittingly arrive,--an end he could not as yet foresee,--he sat quietly
in his chair as usual, gazing into the fire with the meditative patience
and calm of old age, and silently building up in a waking dream the last
story of his House of Love,--which now promised to be like that house
spoken of in the Divine Parable--"And the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for
it was founded upon a rock." For as he knew,--and as we all must surely
know,--the greatest rains and floods and winds of a world of sorrow, are
powerless to destroy love, if love be true.

CHAPTER XX

Three days later, when the dawn was scarcely declared and the earliest
notes of the waking birds trembled on the soft air with the faint
sweetness of a far-off fluty piping, the door of Mary Deane's cottage
opened stealthily, and David Helmsley, dressed ready for a journey,
stepped noiselessly out into the little garden. He wore the same
ordinary workman's outfit in which he had originally started on his
intended " tramp," including the vest which he had lined with banknotes,
and which he had not used once since his stay with Mary Deane. For she
had insisted on his wearing the warmer and softer garments which had
once belonged to her own father,--and all these he had now taken off and
left behind him, carefully folded up on the bed in his room. He had
examined his money and had found it just as he had placed it,--even the
little "surprise packet" which poor Tom o' the Gleam had collected for
his benefit in the "Trusty Man's" common room, was still in the
s