THE CAPTAIN IN STRANGE COMPANY.

For the first time in his remarkably short existence Comethup Willis began to lead a double life. He had already done so, to a very small extent, in regard to his meetings with Brian and with the captain; but now he began systematically to divide his life into two parts. His reason for this was purely an instinctive one, and he would have been puzzled, under any circumstances, to explain even to himself why he saw in his childish mind that such a course of action was necessary. But, although he admired and almost worshipped his cousin Brian, as a being superior in every way to his very humble self and of more brilliant parts, he yet felt that, in a delicate matter like that on which he had embarked with the captain, Brian must be set aside.

It caused him many heart-pangs to arrive at this conclusion, but to his childish understanding it was the only thing possible; having once made up his mind, he kept stiffly to it. He had entered into a compact of the emotional order with the captain, and he consoled himself for any disloyalty to Brian with the thought that he was only concerned with the captain in the matter, and that the secret was not really his own.

This species of deception, while it added a new element of excitement to his life, made him also frantically desirous of falling in with every plot and plan arranged or invented by his cousin on the few occasions on which they met. Those occasions were few indeed, for the captain had shown, in some curious, curt fashion, that he did not like the boy Brian; and Brian, for his part, was laughingly contemptuous of the captain. So that poor Comethup, in order to keep all his friends, and in the deep desire he had not to wound the feelings of any of them, had a very difficult task to perform. A child of blunter character or perception would have got through with the matter very easily, and would not have troubled about it at all; but Comethup took everything, even in those days, in deadly earnest, and lay awake many nights in the dark, sore at heart with the thought that some light word of his to the captain, or some half-promise broken to Brian, might have given either of them pain. Comethup had that strange and—for the possessor—terrible quality of being able to feel, with the utmost acuteness, any pain borne by those with whom he came in contact; the quality of feeling it so instantly that it was often more real in its intensity to him than to them.

It is possible that the captain understood the desire in Comethup’s mind that Brian should not be included in their compact to befriend ’Linda; indeed, it was a matter so completely between Comethup and the captain that probably neither of them would have thought of including any one else in their confidence. Moreover, the matter, begun in secret and at night, had, in all appropriateness, to be carried on in the same fashion. Even the captain was not too old, and Comethup certainly not too young, to have a mutually romantic feeling that that was the proper course to adopt. They talked it over together in all seriousness.

“You see, Comethup,” said the captain, “we were not received with that—that cordiality which could lead us, with any delicacy, to approach Dr. Vernier again. I’m not quite sure that we wish to do so; but, in any case, it will be wiser to leave him out of the question.”

Comethup nodded, feeling that that argument was unanswerable.

“The question then resolves itself into this,” said the captain, sitting stiffly upright, with a hand on each knee, and looking down at Comethup, who was imitating his attitude as far as possible, on a stool before him, “how are we to save fair ladies who are wandering about in dreary woods, and getting wet, unless we do it by force of arms, and bid defiance to the enemy?” The captain had, in his many conversations with the boy, got the true poetic, romantic ring; it was a never-ceasing delight to Comethup that his wonderful friend was able to bring that glamour into the commonest circumstance of life.

“We might go and walk round the house, and—and hide among the trees until she comes out,” said Comethup.

The captain shook his head. “Scarcely dignified, I’m afraid, Comethup,” he said. “Of course,” he added with a fine air of carelessness, “we might happen to stroll past the place, and we might just look in at the gates, and——”

Comethup understood perfectly, and nodded with much vigour. So complete indeed was the understanding between them that, when the captain, on parting with him, said with much ceremony, “You might call for me about seven o’clock, Comethup, if you are not better employed,” the boy felt his heart leap, and was eager for the expedition.

But the captain was a man of bluntness, and totally unused to lurking ways. They reached the gates in the semi-darkness, and looked in up the dreary avenue, and then walked slowly on side by side. The captain even waved his stick skyward, and predicted airily that it would be a fine day on the morrow. Comethup agreed with him, with more eagerness than befitted the occasion, even going out of his way to recall impressions of yesterday’s weather as compared with the present. Then, about a hundred yards from the gate, the captain swung on his heel, and they strolled back again. Still no sound about the deserted place, and no little figure in the garden. The captain came from pretence to reality at a bound, and faced sternly upon Comethup.

“Boy, this isn’t right, and I’m not right to be teaching you to hide and skulk here. I’m going up to the house.”

“I think perhaps it would be better,” admitted Comethup slowly.

They marched with much determination through the wind-swept garden and among the drifting leaves. Both Comethup and the captain looked eagerly all about, but saw nothing; they made the circuit of the house, and then stopped at the door by which they had previously entered.

The captain raised his stick and struck sharply on the panel; waited a little, but there was no response. Then he stepped back and glanced up at the windows; but they were all closely shuttered, and no light appeared anywhere. The captain stepped up to the door again and renewed his attack on the panel. After another long period of waiting, there was a sound of shuffling feet on the bare boards within, and the door was opened so far as the length of a chain that held it would allow. The captain pressed forward to the aperture and spoke:

“Is Dr. Vernier within?”

“The doctor say he can’t see no one,” came the reply.

“Oh, I’m much obliged,” said the captain. “I wanted to know if the child—the little girl—is well? You remember I——”

“Oh, yes, I knows all about you,” replied the woman sharply. “And there’s folks as can look after her, and mind their business without no interferin’.” The door was slammed quickly, and they heard the shuffling feet going down the hall.

The captain remained very upright for a moment, recovering himself; and then turned to Comethup. “Let that be a warning to you, boy,” he said stiffly, “never to argue with your inferiors. The enemy is not to be surprised, that’s evident; we must try stratagem. As a soldier, Comethup, I have learned that stratagem is very useful. I despise it, but it’s very useful.”

But all the stratagem the captain could employ, and all the loyal aid given by Comethup in a cause in which he was desperately interested, failed to bring them any nearer the object of their search. They walked past the garden many times after that, on many successive days, taking it casually in their walks first, and afterward going there of set purpose. But the garden was always empty, and the house apparently deserted. They had almost given up in despair, when one night, rather later than usual, when they passed the gates, Comethup, lingering for a moment, saw the faint flutter of something white among the trees, and ran to it, crying softly “’Linda!” The captain went in too, but remained standing just within the gates. With a delicacy which belonged to him, he let the children meet in their own impulsive, breathless fashion alone.

’Linda was clinging to the boy, divided between laughter and tears, when the captain, looking past them, observed a figure hurrying toward them from the house—the figure of a woman certainly not portly enough to be Mrs. Blissett. The captain took a few strides forward, and reached the children at the same moment that the woman came up with them; she stood, almost in an attitude of defiance, looking at him. He noticed that she was tall and rather slight, and quite young. Instinctively his hat came off, and he bowed in his stiff fashion. For a moment there was silence between them; each seemed to be waiting for the other to speak.

“What do you want, sir?” she asked at last, in a suppressed voice.

“I merely called—came here, I should say—in the hope of seeing the child, and knowing that she was well,” said the captain. “I found her here the other night, and, though it is no business, of course, of mine, I feared that she was lonely, and, forgive me, perhaps neglected. I came here a few evenings ago, but was refused admittance.”

“You are a friend of—of Dr. Vernier’s?” she hazarded.

“No, not exactly a friend,” replied the captain, diplomatically. “We—we have met—that is all. Are you the child’s nurse?”

The woman bent her head and stretched an arm out, and drew the child close against her.

“I thought perhaps you might be a—a relative,” ventured the captain, replacing his hat.

“No,” she replied, in a low voice, “I am not a relative. Dr. Vernier has engaged me chiefly to look after the child.”

“I am glad,” said the captain, with awkward gallantry, “that she is in such good hands.” The situation was becoming embarrassing; the captain knew that he had no earthly right there, and felt that he must withdraw his forces without delay. He stooped, and held his hand out to the child, who shyly took it; bade her “Good-night” with much gentleness, and turned and left the garden, followed by Comethup, who glanced back again and again at the little white figure walking with the woman in the direction of the house.

Comethup was very serious indeed as they walked toward his father’s house. This new figure in the story could not be dealt with with the ease with which a mere Blissett might be tackled. He saw a prospect of losing forever that little figure which had so strongly interested him. He expressed his fears tremblingly to the captain as he trotted beside him.

“Shall we see her again, sir?”

“Don’t know, Comethup,” replied the captain, dejectedly. “Direct attack has failed; stratagem has failed also. I’m afraid we can’t do anything else to assist your little damsel in distress, Comethup.”

Comethup went to his bed, to dream that he went again to the garden, and found the gates fastened strongly against him; that he beat his hands against the bars of them, crying to the child to let him in, and to the captain to come with his sword and break the gates down. He awoke in the dark, with the tears still wet upon his cheeks, and cried himself to sleep again.

Sick with the necessity for consolation, he went on the following morning to see the captain. The captain had constituted himself, for some time past, a sort of informal instructor to Comethup; had dragged from an old box some very out-of-date lesson books, and was renewing his own youth by plodding steadily over that first stony ground of knowledge with the boy, taking infinite delight in his pupil’s progress. Comethup had learned many things at those lessons—scraps of this and bits of that—and had had, interwoven with the more technical subjects, a certain thread of hard and pure and very fine morality as to straightness of living and one’s duty to one’s fellows, which had formed the captain’s creed throughout all his simple life.

On this particular morning, although neither mentioned his distress to the other, the matter was very fully in the minds of both, and no real attempt was made to take lessons seriously. Indeed, the captain, with a very fine intuition, had guessed what would be the condition of Comethup’s mind, and had not even got out the books. Comethup found him standing near the window, examining, with a somewhat troubled face, a pair of boots, passing one finger delicately over places in the uppers which seemed untrustworthy, and holding them from him at arm’s length, to get a more general effect in regard to their appearance. The soles of the boots were very thin, and the heels rather high.

“I am going,” said the captain, setting the boots down on the window seat, and gravely returning Comethup’s salute, “to pay a visit to the shoemaker’s.” He regarded the boots with a thoughtful frown. “They might go a week or two longer, Comethup, but the result would probably be disastrous. One gets used in time, when one is not rich, to judge exactly the moment when delay, in a matter of this kind, is no longer safe, and when the thing must be done, if it is to be done at all. It’s like fighting a battle, Comethup; either you must strike at a given moment, or you’d better not strike at all. Will you come with me?”

The captain always addressed the boy with equal courtesy, and Comethup had learned to reply with gravity. He expressed his willingness now to accompany the captain, and they set out.

In a quaint little street, in the very heart of the town—a place which Comethup had not before explored, and which was reached by diving under an archway and then doubling sharply round a corner—they came upon the shop which the captain sought. He had wrapped the boots neatly in brown paper, and carried them tucked under his arm, probably with the desire that no one should guess his errand; he even glanced about him to right and left for a moment before stepping into the low doorway of the shop.

It was a very little shop, so low and small that it seemed half underground; the captain, although by no means a tall man, had to duck his head a little in entering. Comethup noticed at once that it was not like an ordinary shop, in that it had no counter, and that only a heavy bench ran along one side of it, on which an old man was seated, hammering away with much fierceness on something fastened to his knee. But Comethup had no time to take in more than the bare details of the place, for his eyes were arrested by something else: a little figure perched up on the rough bench beside the man and looking with wide, astonished eyes at the captain and the boy. It was ’Linda.

The man who worked had looked up at them for a moment sharply out of keen black eyes, and then had bent his head again over his leather. He worked as one in a frantic hurry—a man who had no time for thought, scarcely a moment even to breathe; the hammer rose and fell sharply, rising up above the level of his head, so closely were his eyes bent on the work. The child sat quite near to him, smiling at the visitors.

The captain’s voice broke in across the hammering, and stopped it. “Why, little one,” he said, gently, “what are you doing here?”

The hammer rested on the leather, the man’s knotted hand grasping it firmly; his black eyes looked up sideways at the captain. “Why not?” he asked in a quick, harsh voice. “What should harm her?” He did not speak like a countryman. Comethup was a little afraid of him, and of his black eyes, but the child beside him only smiled, and did not move.

“Nothing, nothing,” said the captain, hastily. “I was merely surprised to see the child here; she is a little friend of mine—we are friends, are we not, ’Linda?”

The child nodded, and Comethup, emboldened by her smile, crossed to where she sat and shyly held out his hand. She leaned forward and put her arm about his neck and kissed him. The shoemaker glanced at them sharply, and then, with a grunt, started hammering again at his leather.

“We have been looking for you, ’Linda,” said Comethup, softly.

The old man caught the remark and paused in his hammering, in the same fashion as before, and looked quickly round at them. “Yes, that’s what you do from the time they lift you first into your cradle till the hour they slip a winding sheet round you; it’s the old story, begun by baby lips, and whispered by the dying. Looking for her?” He put out a hand and touched Comethup on the breast and pushed him almost roughly away. “Let be, let be; the little maid can bide here as long as she will.” He spoke with a certain stern sadness, and Comethup and the captain looked at him in perplexity.

“Oh, they’re very good friends, and he’s a good boy,” said the captain, laughing. “You don’t know the boy.”

The old man glanced up at him sharply. “No, but they’re all alike.” He leaned forward suddenly and took Comethup by the shoulder and drew him toward himself, looking straight into his eyes. Comethup’s heart beat a little faster than usual, but he did not flinch.

“Well,” said the captain, after the scrutiny had lasted for some moments, “what do you make of him?”

The shoemaker, still keeping a grip of Comethup’s shoulder, looked up at the captain and spoke in a low voice. “A good face,” he said, “and the eyes of one who will dream dreams, and carry them with him always. I’ve dreamed my dreams, but”—he passed his hand over his forehead in a lost, dazed fashion—“I’ve lost them all.” He sighed, and took up his hammer and fell to work again, muttering to himself. Presently, coming back to realities with a start, he put down the hammer and asked the captain civilly if he could do anything for him.

The captain produced his parcel and began, with great care, to point out exactly what he wanted done and what he desired left undone. The shoemaker obviously saw here a work on which his finest arts could be exercised, and listened with equal care to the minute directions. The business being finished and the price arranged, the captain lingered in the doorway of the little shop and carelessly put a question:

“Does she come often to see you?”

“When she will,” replied the old man, softly hammering. “Sometimes a week goes by and I see nothing of her; and then she’ll slip in and sit beside me for an hour, and be gone again—so lightly that I think afterward it’s a dream, and that she has not been here at all. It’s all dreams; nothing is real.”

“Oh, I’m afraid some things are very real,” said the captain gravely.

“No.” He brought the hammer down sharply to emphasize the word. “If they were real we could not bear them; we should go mad. It’s because they are dreams that we can laugh a little sometimes and say that it doesn’t matter, and pray for the hour when we shall wake. Nothing’s real, nothing’s real; we should be glad of that.” He fell to hammering again, in the same hurried fashion as when they had first seen him. Indeed, nothing would rouse him again; even when the captain asked that he might take the girl with him, and she slipped down from the bench and walked with Comethup to the door, the shoemaker merely raised his eyes for a moment to look at her, and went on again with his work. They heard the noise of the hammering long after they had passed through the doorway and through the little street; it only seemed to die away when they came out through the archway into the busier parts of the town.

The captain had a delightful new pupil that day. The three went out to the marshes beyond the town, and there, at Comethup’s modest suggestion, the captain assisted in the building of the forts and instructed ’Linda in the first principles of military tactics. She proved an apt and eager pupil, overleaping obstacles which appeared to present themselves to the slower mind of the captain, and showing a delightful sense of the fine art of strategy and a quickness of resource in a difficult situation, which elicited that gentleman’s warm approval. In the most natural and fearless fashion she walked back with them to the captain’s cottage and partook of the captain’s simple dinner, unconsciously and quickly taking a position in the small household which no one had dared to occupy before. She showed unbounded delight at the salute given by Homer, the captain’s man, and actually called him back into the room again and insisted on his repeating the performance in order that she might see exactly how it was done, making the blushing man do it very slowly indeed, that she might take in every turn and twist of his arm.

Comethup trembled a little, lest the captain should take offence; but the captain’s heart had been taken by storm, and he allowed the mite to rule him as completely as she appeared to rule others with whom she came in contact outside her father’s house. Finally, Comethup received instructions to take her back home in safety; and the two children set off hand in hand, the captain standing at the garden gate of his cottage to watch their departure. She had completed her conquest of that gallant warrior by seizing him by the lapels of his coat and drawing his head down in the most unexpected fashion and kissing him before she dashed out of the cottage with Comethup, whose salute to the captain was a mere undignified flying wave of the arm, in consequence of her haste.

At the big iron gates which led to her father’s house they saw the woman standing who had been in the garden on the previous day; she drew the child swiftly within the gates, and went down on her knees and held her close to her breast without a word. Comethup, embarrassed, stood looking on, not knowing whether to go or to stay; he felt, however, that the necessity of the situation compelled him to explain the child’s absence.

“We met ’Linda quite by accident,” he said, “the captain and I, and she has had dinner with the captain. I do assure you, ma’am”—he had got that phrase from the captain—“that she has been perfectly safe.”

“Oh, I am quite sure she has,” replied the woman, looking round at him with a smile. “And I am very grateful to the captain and to you.—Say ‘Good-night,’ ’Linda,” she added to the child.

Comethup was getting quite used to that rapturous hug with which ’Linda favoured her friends—was getting rather to like it. He lingered for a moment outside the gate, until the two figures had disappeared, and then sped away homeward, planning for to-morrow, and for many other morrows, in which the captain and ’Linda explored again with him the wonders of the old town and of the buried ramparts, and renewed acquaintance, for ’Linda’s sake, with all the strange things he had learned under the captain’s tuition.

It happened that night that the captain was restless and ill at ease. A man of simple tastes and simple habits, he had lived for some years in the old town, scarcely seeing any one but his man Homer before Comethup came into his life. It had cost him not a little to shake himself free from the stiff and rigid rules of life into which he had grown; but, led by Comethup’s persuasive hand, he had done so, and had, in a sense, renewed his lost youth in the child’s company. He was frightened a little now sometimes when he thought of what it would mean to him if, by any chance or change of circumstance, he lost the boy; he dared not contemplate the barren life he had been content to live for so long, nor think how empty it would be if he had to return to it.

And now, in the strangest fashion, this child had led him to another—had brought even a softer element into his life, and increased his responsibilities. The captain, in a gentle, foolish fashion, was proud of those responsibilities, and would not willingly have let them go. He might have argued with himself that the children had natural guardians who could look after them, and whose rights were greater than any he possessed; but he plumed himself with the idea that the children had turned to him, and relied upon him more completely than on any one else. As he paced about his little room in the dark, he seemed to feel again that baby’s arm round his neck and her soft, rounded face pressed to his hollow one; he thought of her sitting in the strange company of the old shoemaker; remembered, with a pang, the forlorn little figure he had first seen in the garden.

It all ended in a determination to see the shoemaker and to learn something more of him. He had visited him on one or two occasions when a specially delicate matter of repairing had to be explained and when the man Homer could scarcely have been intrusted with it, but beyond that he knew nothing of the man. The captain weighed the pros and cons of the matter carefully, and finally put on his hat and set out for the shoemaker’s house.

It was a fine moonlight night, and the captain, on turning into the little street through the archway, saw that the door of the shoemaker’s shop was open, and that the man he sought was sitting on the step, with his feet in the room and his back propped against the doorpost. The captain walked on, carelessly swinging his cane, and trying to hum a tune; stopped opposite the little shop, and remarked upon the beauty of the night. The old man grunted some inaudible reply, and looked up at him suspiciously; he was smoking a short, black pipe, pulling and puffing at it as furiously and rapidly as he appeared to do everything.

“If you’ve come about those boots——” he began aloud, but the captain checked him.

“No; of course I did not expect them yet,” he replied. “I happened to be strolling round this way, and thought I should like a chat with you.”

The shoemaker took his pipe from between his teeth and stared at the captain for a moment; then replaced the pipe and nodded. The captain was a little disconcerted, but he had an obstinate feeling that he would not go away with his purpose defeated, and so he leaned against the other doorpost and smiled and nodded back at the shoemaker.

“Yes,” he said airily, “I was interested in what you said to-day—about—about what you call your dreams; and about—the child.”

The shoemaker did a surprising thing: he got up suddenly, thrust his face toward the captain, and looked at him in the moonlight steadily; then turned abruptly, and stumbled down the two steps which led into his shop, leaving the captain gasping and staring after him. In a few moments the captain, looking in through the doorway, saw the glimmer of a light; then saw the old man bending to light a candle which stood on the bench while a gigantic shadow, grotesque and hideous, danced and sprawled all over the wall behind him and the ceiling above. When he had got the candle alight, and had carefully set his foot upon the match, he went to the door again and beckoned. “Come in,” he said; and the captain went down the two steps a little doubtfully.

The shoemaker closed the door and dropped a wooden bar across it. The door fitted above the two steps; the shoemaker seated himself upon the topmost one and waved his hand toward the bench, on one end of which the candle stood.

“Sit down,” said the man.

The captain seated himself, and glanced somewhat apprehensively about him. The window was shuttered, and the tools with which the man worked had been piled neatly together on a little table with a raised edge which stood against the wall. Boots in every stage of formation and repair lay all bout the place—some mere gaping upper parts, and others having but the faint suggestion of what they might ultimately become in roughly cut leather sheets. The captain drew his coat-tails about his knees and rested his hands on them, and waited for the other to speak. The shoemaker waited for some moments, and then began in a low voice, with his eyes bent on the ground:

“I wasn’t born in these parts—it doesn’t matter where I came from; some might call me a rough and common man, working at a dirty trade. Yet time was when I read and talked and held my own with men who’d been to school and college. Many and many a night I’ve laid awake reading and thinking and working—trying, as men say, to better myself. And what has it all brought me?” He threw out his arms with a passionate gesture and without raising his head, and let them fall at his sides again.

The captain was silent, wondering what was coming, seeing in the man’s attitude and in his voice some long, pent-up story, and wondering, in his simple fashion, why the man should have chosen him to hear the tale.

“My life was not all work and book-learning. I married. Looking at me now, any man might say I am a hard and bitter creature; but I was the happiest in the world then. We had a child—a baby girl—the fairest, sweetest thing that ever came straight out of God’s arms.”

He sprang up with a cry and waved his arms fiercely above his head. “Straight out of God’s arms!” he cried, in a loud voice. “Let any man deny that she has gone straight back into them!”

“She is dead, then?” said the captain softly.

The man dropped his arms and stared about him for a moment helplessly. “Yes, but that happened long after. I can remember her now, as a tiny child, coming into the room where I worked and climbing on the bench beside me, and prattling to me in her baby fashion—music sweeter than any other that a man hears. I wish”—he had begun to roam restlessly up and down the place, swinging his arms as he went—“I wish it might have been possible for her to remain like that forever. But, of course, that wasn’t to be. She grew up, and I was proud of her and proud to think that she belonged to me and held me dearer than any one else. Then into our paradise came the man—as the man always comes. I think he must have loved her—at first, at least; she was so good and beautiful and pure that no man could pass her by and look into her eyes without loving her. And then—oh, ages ago; I’ve forgotten when it was—she went away, and wrote me a letter saying that she had gone with him and that she would never forget me, and that some day she would come back with him, and that we were all to be happy together.”

The captain’s elbow was resting on his knee and his head was propped on his hand, so that the hand shaded his eyes. The shoemaker went on, in a dull, heavy voice. He had clearly forgotten that he had a listener.

“I tried to find him, tried everywhere. I watched for her, night after night, until they said that want of sleep and care and sorrow had driven me ill. It was then I first began to dream; I have dreamed ever since. And when at last I was better, and was able to get again to my work, her mother was gone; they did not tell me where at first, but afterward I learned that she had died, and I was completely alone. I came here then; it was a place where no one knew me, and none could ask questions. And here, two years ago, a letter followed me, written by the man, and saying that she was dead. That is the hardest thing of all—that she died in some strange land, far over the seas; and I can not even know where she lies buried, or where she sleeps, or whether the sun shines on her grave. It doesn’t matter—it doesn’t matter.”

The captain raised his head and looked at him. “Perhaps she was happy in her new life; perhaps——”

The man broke in upon the words fiercely. “She died in shame and want and misery. The man had tired of his plaything; in his cold and brutal letter he told me that they had not agreed, and that he had deemed it wiser to part from her. He begged of me to believe”—the scorn in the old man’s voice as he flung out his arm passionately was terrible—“that he would have married her had it been possible; he was sorry for her death.”

He had drawn his arm, in an uncouth fashion, across his eyes, and his voice shook as he finished. Presently he let his arm fall to his side and looked about him in that curious, helpless way, with something of a smile upon his face.

“And so you see,” he went on, in a gentler tone, “I live on here from day to day, and dream my dreams; and am happy to forget sometimes which is truth and which is dream. And then quite suddenly one day, while I sat at my work here, I lifted up my eyes and saw—O God, my heart leaps now when I think of it!—saw her, as I thought, come back to me, a baby again, standing in the doorway smiling. That was the best dream of all; that is the best dream still.” He raised his eyes, laughed aloud, and clasped his hands.

“Does she come here often?” asked the captain, gently.

“Yes, often and often. We do not even speak to each other sometimes, but I like to feel her close beside me, just as the other one sat, ages and ages ago. Who knows”—he laid a hand upon the captain’s arm and sank his voice to a whisper—“who knows but that she is mine, come back, like a fairy child, in purity and innocence, to comfort me, and to tell me that all the rest has been a dream indeed? How else should she come to me? Yes, I like to think that—it comforts me.”

The captain would not have stripped away that dream from the man for the world. He was so touched that he begged quite humbly that he might be permitted to come again to see him; and finally went out into the darkness and took his way homeward. But the captain was troubled in spirit, and the shining heavens above him did not seem to have quite the clear and fine message of peace that they had held so long for his simple soul. He took a circuitous route, and came again to the great dreary place where the child lived and looked in through the dilapidated gates. He sighed a little as he turned away, and whispered softly, “God keep you, baby—God keep you!”