ren, picking violets and primroses in the
hedgerow by the small white house, did not hear it. The occasional
tourists who trudged sturdily onward to the rugged pass at the head of
the valley did not hear it.

Only Maurice Dale heard it, and grew white and shivered.

Even to him it had been at first as faint as an echo pulsing through a
dream. He had said to himself that it was a fancy of his brain. And then
he had pulled himself together and listened. And again, as if from very
far off, the little cry had stolen to his ear and faded away. Then he
had said to himself that it was the night wind caught in some cranny of
the house, and striving to get free. He had thrown open his window and
leaned out, and trembled, when he found that the hot night was
breathless, airless, that no leaf danced in the elm that shaded his
study, that the ivy climbing beneath the sill did not stir as he gazed
down at it with straining eyes.

It was not the cry of the wind then. Yet it must be. Or if not that it
must be some voice of nature. But the river had no such thrill of pain,
of reproach in its song. Then he thought it was some night bird,
haunting the eaves of his cottage, or the tangle of wood the country
people called his garden. And he put on his clothes eagerly, descended
the narrow staircase, and let himself out on to the path that curved to
the white gate. But, in the garden there was no sound of birds.

This was a year ago. Maurice remembered very well his long vigil in the
garden, and how he had prayed that he might hear one note, one only, of
a night-jar, or the hoot of an owl in the forest, so that the black
thought just born in his mind might be strangled, and the shadow driven
out of his heart. But his prayer had not been granted. And he knew he
had not deserved that it should be. Towards dawn he went back into his
house again, and on the threshold, just as a pallor glimmered up as if
out of the grass at his feet, he heard the cry again. And he knew that
it came from within the house.

Then the sweat stood on his forehead, and he said to himself, with pale
lips, "It is the cry of the child!"

All the people of Brayfield by the sea were agreed on one point. The new
doctor, Maurice Dale, young as he looked, was clever. He had done
wonders for Mrs. Bird, the rich old lady at Ocean View. He had performed
a quite brilliant amputation on Tommy Lyne, the poor little boy who had
been run down by a demon bicyclist. And then he w