ive to be an old bachelor."

"I'm afraid I shall, though I have found her already," murmured Tommy.

CHAPTER XIII

VANISHED

Honor Bright paid several visits to the Mission after Elsie Meek's
death, hoping to be of use in cheering the bereaved mother. After the
funeral most of the ladies had called to sympathise, Joyce among them,
tearful and tender; but having nothing in common with Methodists who
held aloof from Station society, her visit of condolence ended the
intercourse, so that, but for Honor, Mrs. Meek would have been much
alone. The girl would cycle down for an hour or so and chat with, or
read to the grief-stricken woman while she worked garments for the
converted heathen, thus affording her the priceless boon of sympathetic
companionship.

During these visits it became apparent to her how much the Padre had
changed. He was hardly the same man. All his dictatorial ways were gone,
his self-sufficiency vanished; he was, instead, bowed down with
depression, he looked older than his years, and spoke with a new and
strange humility.

Very shyly, as though unaccustomed to the role, he was becoming the
attentive husband with an anxious eye for his wife's comfort, and
seeking to show her by unobtrusive services that he understood and
shared her grief and was suffering the pangs of remorse. It was not easy
for Mr. Meek to confess that he now realised he had been a hard husband
and father, but his manner was tantamount to such a confession, and Mrs.
Meek was deeply touched. The passionate love and devotion of nineteen
years ago had long settled into a natural affection for the father of
her child, and now when she was stricken to the earth with sorrow, the
void in her heart craved to be filled, and she could feel he was
striving to fill it.

"You don't know how pathetic it seems to me," she confided in Honor,
"his self-conviction and efforts to atone. He must have been fond of our
child, deep down, though unable to show it, not being of a demonstrative
nature. I think he feels he was narrow and bigoted not to have allowed
her a few innocent pleasures such as girls enjoy among young people in a
Station,--and it is too late now!"

"There is nothing I can imagine so painful as unavailing remorse," said
Honor.

"It makes me sorry for him and though I have found it hard to forgive
him, I have uttered no word of reproach. He is so altered. Although a
good man and truly religious, he was yet growing unconsc