r and therefore stronger than my own. And I, leaving my
dross behind me, must go forward and begin again--spiritually the wiser
for my experience of this world, which may help me better to understand
the next."

Thus he mused, as he slowly trudged along under the bright and burning
sun--happy enough in his thoughts except that now and then a curious
touch of foreboding fear came over him as to whether anything ill had
happened to Mary in his absence.

"For one never knows!"--and a faint shudder came over him as he
remembered Tom o' the Gleam, and the cruel, uncalled-for death of his
child, the only human creature left to him in the world to care for.
"One can never tell, whether in the scheme of creation there is such a
being as a devil, who takes joy in running counter to the beneficent
intentions of the Creator! Light exists--and Darkness. Good seems
co-equal with Evil. It is all mystery! Now, suppose Mary were to die?
Suppose she were, at this very moment, dead?"

Such a horror came over him as this idea presented itself to his mind
that he trembled from head to foot, and his brain grew dizzy. He had
walked for a longer time than he knew since the cart in which he had
ridden part of the way had left him at about four miles away from
Weircombe, and he felt that he must sit down on the roadside and rest
for a bit before going further. How cruel, how fiendish it would be, he
continued to imagine, if Mary were dead! It would be devil's work!--and
he would have no more faith in God! He would have lost his last
hope,--and he would fall into the grave a despairing atheist and
blasphemer! Why, if Mary were dead, then the world was a snare, and
heaven a delusion!--truth a trick, and goodness a lie! Then--was all the
past, the present, and future hanging for him like a jewel on the finger
of one woman? He was bound to admit that it was so. He was also bound to
admit that all the past, present, and future had, for poor Tom o' the
Gleam, been centred in one little child. And--God?--no, not God--but a
devil, using as his tools devilish men,--had killed that child! Then,
might not that devil kill Mary? His head swam, and a sickening sense of
bafflement and incompetency came over him. He had made his will,--that
was true!--but who could guarantee that she whom he had chosen as his
heiress would live to inherit his wealth?

"I wish I did not think of such horrible things!" he said wearily--"Or I
wish I could walk faster, and get