n show her much that will interest
and transform her. She runs a risk, certainly, in marrying me, but she
knows my worst, and by Heaven--Ringfield, there's a power of comfort in
that! No setting on a pedestal, no bowing to an idol--and then perhaps
she will help in the working out of the tiger and the ape, make the
beast within me die. How the old familiar lines come back to one here
in this solitary place! I suppose I'll go down to Oxford some day and
see my old rooms,--take Pauline. We'd like to keep in touch with you,
Ringfield, send you a line now and then after you leave St. Ignace, for
I don't figure you remaining here all your life at the beck and call of
Poussette."

Ringfield's eyes were on the ground, for a deep mystification still
possessed him; he had scarcely heard the latter part of Crabbe's
speech, for there remained unanswered that question in his tortured
mind--whose child was Angeel if not Pauline's, for he still saw the
basket-chair with the dreadful face in it as he looked down in the
barn, and still heard those damaging whispers from Enderby the night of
the concert.

A groan escaped him; he threw a pained and bitter glance at Crabbe and
again studied the ground.

"I find it hard to believe you. Hard, hard. The people at Hawthorne
all say it was--it was her's. Enderby told me."

"God help you for a silly lunatic if you listen to the tales of country
people, Ringfield! They may have said so, they may have said all kinds
of stuff--I never spoke of it to a living soul myself, even in my cups;
I'll swear I left it alone even then."

"But now, now you can speak! The time has come to speak! If not you,
then who, who could be that poor child's father!"

"Why, of course I can tell you that!" said Crabbe, coming a pace
nearer. "I wonder you have not guessed by now. Her brother, Henry
Clairville. It was a bad business, but he paid for it, as we all do,
Ringfield, we all do."

With a fierce gesture of extreme astonishment the minister sprang
forward and in his excitement struck the guide on the breast, a heavy
blow. Startled into forgetting his dangerous position, Crabbe threw
himself backward, seeing, as he thought, sudden madness in the other's
eyes, and immediately his doom was sealed. He slipped, tripped, tried
to save himself, rolled from one ice-covered boulder to another, was
cast from one mighty cauldron of furious seething waters to another,
and finally disappeared in the deep