holding for her. The starlight gleamed on his bare brow. It was
like a well-wrought piece of granite. He brushed his hair back with an
unsteady hand as he sat down.

"I was talking with Cavanaugh," he began, and paused to clear the
huskiness from his throat.

"I know," Tilly said. "I've heard everything."

"You have?" Joel said, tremulously.

"Yes, the Creswells told me yesterday. You see, Tom Creswell works in
the post-office, and the postmaster showed him and the other clerks a
letter that Mr. Cavanaugh was sending to John since he got back from New
York. Then the postmaster showed him one answering it. The postmaster
met Mr. Cavanaugh and asked him about it, and Mr. Cavanaugh told him
that it was all a mistake about John and Dora being killed. He says John
is doing well and looks well. Oh, I'm so glad--so glad! Ever since the
report of that wreck it has been on my mind like a horrible dream. Night
and day it would come up to haunt me. Don't you see, I thought-- I felt
that if--if I had not gone away that day with my father John would have
been alive. So now, you see, I haven't _that_ to think about. God spared
him and Dora, and Mattie Creswell says they are both happily married."

"Both?" Joel exclaimed. "You haven't got it right, Tilly. Dora married
and left him all alone. Cavanaugh says John never married."

"Never married?" Tilly's sweet lips hung quivering. "But Mattie Creswell
says her brother told her that Cavanaugh said that John was married to a
wealthy girl in high society."

"It is my duty to tell you the truth," Eperson said, the look of death
deepening on him. "He never married. He has been leading a strange,
lonely life. I think I know why. You can guess."

"_I_ can guess?" Tilly was pale and trembling as she leaned toward him.

"Well, no, perhaps you can't," Joel corrected, "but I know why."

"You know why?" Tilly's voice broke on the last word, and she stared at
him eagerly, her sweet mouth drooping.

"Yes, because no man who was once your husband even for the few days
that you were his could ever marry any other woman."

"You--you rate me too highly," Tilly faltered, putting her hands over
her face. "Why, why, I've always thought that till his death he hated
me for deserting him as I did when all the rest of the world was down on
him."

"He is no fool, and he was not even then, boy though he was. He knew why
you went away so suddenly. Do you hear me? He simply acted as I would
have done