hand, while within the house reigned the awful silence of companionless voids.

Not until morning did Ashgrave take note that he had not looked at the date of the Milbank paper. If it were a week or a fortnight old, it might well be that the danger was already farther advanced than he had thought. In the evening he drove again to Belmont and, avoiding the tavern and crowd surely to be found there, sought a shopkeeper whom he knew to be a subscriber. There, confirming his fears, he learned that the paper was ten days old, and in the later issue he read that the elder Mr. Barnaby had been to Milbank and had taken his son home to Newburyport.

The paper stated:

He brought an expert with him from Portland, who, after a careful examination, confirms in every particular the diagnosis of our local physicians to whose skill and clear medical and surgical knowledge he pays a tribute that can but be gratifying to their many friends and especially reassuring to any who may have to call on any of them for medical service. He has no question that young Mr. Barnaby will be speedily restored to complete health and that he will be able to fix the responsibility for his injury on the guilty party of whose identity, it may be said there exists little doubt in the minds of those best ac- · quainted with the particulars of this remarkable affair, though for reasons that will be readily understood without stating them, it is deemed best by all interested, that no hint be given to the public at this time. We have no hesitation in saying, however, that when an arrest is made, as there will be very soon, it will confirm the sagacity of those who have worked on the case and already foresee the inevitable outcome of the matter.

He had nothing material to an estimate of what might be regarded as "speedy" reinstatement in a case like this, nor of whether already the net might not be ready to draw and enclose him. Under the spur of this uncertainty, he rushed into a very frenzy of work during

the day, and at night drove to Belmont for the sake of the companionship which the tavern yielded, and with the hope of securing further information. Some nights he passed at Belmont, reaching the farm only at daylight. On others he came at midnight, only to be daunted by the black vacancy of the house. On these, as on that first night, he slept in the empty stall, rather than brave the loneliness and silence of his bedchamber.

During this week, he fought out with himself the question of a demand on Amanda to come and live with him. More than once he started for Seagrave's, with the purpose of carrying out such a plan, but always was he drawn back by a sense of the foolish position in which he was placing himself, or by the strong conviction, which he could not escape, that to admit Amanda was to place a spy on behalf of Barnaby in his house and at the point of espial on his every act.

By his marriage to her, her good name had been restored; that she loved Barnaby and not himself, he had her own words to prove; in the final issue, the fight between himself and Barnaby would be fought for her possession, in which she must be counted as Barnaby's ally. Was a man in his senses, under such circumstances, to make her the companion of his days and nights, however he might be famished with loneliness?

While yet under the dominance of this uncertainty, he recalled a young Canadian lad, the nephew of the hostler and man of all work at Belmont Tavern. He was a clean-cut fellow of eighteen or nineteen, small and lithe, with black hair and eyes, and a look of mischief loving that attracted Ashgrave by its very opposition to every quality he himself possessed. The snatch of song on Henri's lips; the light jest; the greeting to a passing girl, born of joyousness rather than passion;

the utter abandon to the fact of living, as cause for happiness, were to Ashgrave the unattainable, and therefore the attractive, even though in sober moments despicable.

On the eighth day of his torture, he went to Belmont and brought back with him the boy Henri, to be the companion of his doubly lonely, because terror-ridden, life at the farm.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE

THE CLASH OF CREEDS

HE snows had melted in the south-lying fields and on sun-open hill-tops, but there were still patches under trees to the north, and in the deeper ravines drifts lingered that were eloquent of slowly passing winter. The skunk cabbage was green in marshy places, and when the sun touched them, the young maples and willows showed red and yellow, with the sap that ran in their veins. The maple crop had been gathered, and the farmers were drawing out the manure from pits and yards and spreading it on the fields.

Amanda Ashgrave came to the door, and under the shelter of the wood-shed stood, bare-headed and barearmed, in the April sunshine. Her face told of the keen suffering of a soul that had infinite capacity for sorrow, coupled with proud endurance that grew with disappointment. She was colourless and thin, and her eyes were ringed with darkness that gave them a far-away, yearning expression. Her bare arms were thin, yet strong from the effects of hard work. Her seven months of wifehood had been seven months of widowhood, during which she had served in her father's house, as a slave to all household tasks. Ashgrave never attended meeting, nor came to the village, and she had scarcely seen him since the evening of the marriage.

"The pahson does seem to come here all times o' day an' night," It was her mother's querulous voice behind her,

"P'raps if you 'll tell him you don't want him, he '11 stop." She answered without turning her head. They had come to a pass where they threw their speeches at each other instead of talking direct.

"Ef you'd tell him, 't might du some good." Amanda turned angrily.

"He don't come to see me!"

"Men, tho' they be pahsons, don't come to see women thet hev got children 's old 's they be."

Nothing pleased Mrs. Seagrave more than to anger her daughter. She was one of those women who shun wickedness solely through fear, and begrudge others all that they think they themselves forego through selfdenial.

"He's the clergyman," answered Amanda, holding in leash her anger, as she had learned in the long months of loneliness.

"Clergyman or beggarman, he 's a man hain't he, an' 'tain't fur no good they run a'ter a woman, 'specially one thet 's made a slip an' whose husband hain't round."

Amanda's cheeks turned crimson as she reëntered the house. They had been made to burn many a time in the cruel days since her marriage. It is one of the privileges of our own to say what no stranger would dare say, and Mrs. Seagrave was one to make the most of the few privileges life had left her.

Craig had seen Amanda at the door. Her hurried retreat startled anew his conscience, which he had quieted with the opiate of fiction, in the form of a pretended pastoral visit. He turned away to where Seagrave himself was directing the moving of the manure, and was soon in a running discussion over the mixed subject of church management and top-dressing.

The younger man was of opinion that the farmers