Hamlin Garland

IToC

THE SETTING

The village of Colorow is enclosed by a colossal amphitheatre of dove-gray stone, in whose niches wind-warped pines stand like spectators silent and waiting. Six thousand feet above the valley floor green and orange slopes run to the edges of perennial ice-fields, while farther away, and peering above these almost inaccessible defences, like tents of besieging Titans, rise three great mountains gleaming with snow and thunderous with storms. Altogether a stage worthy of some colossal drama rather than the calm slumber of a forgotten hamlet.

The railway enters the valley from the south by sinuously following the windings of a rushing, foam-white stream, and for many miles the engines cautiously feel their way among stupendous walls, passing haltingly over bridges hung perilously between perpendicular cliffs by slender iron rods, or creep like mountain-cats from ledge to ledge, so that when they have reached safe harbor beside the little red depot they never fail to pant and wheeze like a tired, gratified dog beside his master's door. Aside from the coming and going of these trains, the town is silent as the regarding pines.

The only other ways of entrance to this deep pocket lie over threadlike trails which climb the divide from Silver City and Toltec and Vermilion, and loop their terrifying courses down the declivities trod only by the sturdy burro or the agile, sure-footed mountain-horse. These wavering paths, worn deep and dusty once, are grass-grown now, for they were built in the days when silver was accounted a precious metal, and only an occasional hunter or prospector makes present use of them.

Colorow itself, once a flaming, tumultuous centre of miners, gamblers, and social outcasts, is now risen (or declined) to the quiet of a New England summer resort, supported partly by two or three big mines (whose white ore is streaked with gold), but more and more by the growing fame of its mountains and their medicinal springs, for these splendid peaks have their waters, hot and cold and sweet and bitter, whose healing powers are becoming known to an ever-growing number of those Americans who are minded to explore their native land.

This centre of aËrial storms, these groups of transcendent summits, would be more widely known still, but for the singular sense of proprietorship with which each discoverer regards them. The lucky traveller who falls into this paradise is seized with a certain instant jealousy of it, and communicates his knowledge only to his family and his friends. Nevertheless, its fame spreads slowly, and each year new discoverers flock in growing numbers to the one little hotel and its ramshackle bath-house, so that the community once absolutely and viciously utilitarian begins to take timid account of its aesthetic surroundings, and here and there a little log-cabin (as appropriate to this land as the chalet to the Alps) is built beside the calling ripples of the river, while saddled horses, laden burros in long lines, and now and then a vast yellow or red ore-wagon creaking dolefully as it descends, still give evidence of the mining which goes on far up the zigzag trails towards the soaring, shining peaks of the Continental Divide.

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IIToC

THE MAID ON THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE

One day in July a fair young girl, with beautiful gray eyes, sat musingly beside one of these southern trails gazing upon the inverted pyramid of red sky which glowed between the sloping shoulders of the westward warding peaks. Her exquisite lips, scarlet as strawberry stains, were drawn into an expression of bitter constraint, and her brows were unnaturally knit. Her hat lay beside her on the ground, her brown hair was blowing free, and in her eyes was the look of one longing for the world beyond the hills. She appeared both lonely and desolate.

It was a pity to see one so young and so comely confronting with sad and sullen brow such aËrial majesty as the evening presented. It was, indeed, a sort of impiety, and the girl seemed at last to feel this. Her frowning brow smoothed out, her lips grew more girlish of line, and at length, rapt with wonder, she fixed her eyes on a single purple cloud which was dissolving, becoming each moment smaller, more remote, like a fleeing eagle, yet burning each instant with even more dazzling flame of color than before—hasting as if to overtake the failing day. A dream of still fairer lands, of conquest, and of love, swept over her—became mirrored in her face. She had at this moment the wistful gaze which comes to the eyes of the young when desire of the future is strong.

Upon her musings a small sound broke, so faint, so far, she could not tell from whence it came nor what its cause might be. It might have been the rattle of a pebble under the feet of a near-by squirrel or the scrambling rush of a distant bear. A few moments later the voice of a man—very diminished and yet unmistakable—came pulsing down the mountain-side.

The girl rose as lightly, as gracefully as a fawn who, roused but not affrighted, stands on her imprint in the grass and waits and listens.

The man or men—for another voice could now be heard in answer—came rapidly on, and soon a couple of men and a small pack-train came out of a clump of thick trees at the head of a gulch, and, doubling backward and forward, descended swiftly upon the girl, who stood, with some natural curiosity, to let the travellers, whoever they might be, pass and precede her down to the valley. She resented them, for the reason that they cut short her reverie, her moment of spiritual peace.

The man who first appeared was a familiar type of the West, a small, lean, sharp-featured, foxy-eyed mountaineer, riding gracefully yet wearily—the natural horseman and trailer. Behind him two tired horses, heaped with a camp outfit, stumbled, with low-hanging heads, while at the rear, sitting his saddle sturdily rather than with grace, rode a young man bareheaded, but otherwise in the rough-and-ready dress of a plainsman. His eyes were on the sunset also, and something in the manner of his beard, as well as in the poise of his head, proclaimed him to be the master of the little train, a man of culture and an alien.

At sight of the girl he smiled and bowed with a look of frank and most respectful admiration, quite removed from the impudent stare of his guide. His hands were gloved, he wore a neat shirt, and his tie was in order—so much the girl saw as he faced her—and as he passed she apprehended something strong and manly in the lines of his back and shoulders. Plainly he was not to the saddle born, like the man ahead, and yet he was quite as bronzed and travel-worn.

A turn in the trail brought them both close under her feet, and again the man in the rear glanced up at the figure poised on the bowlder above him, and his eyes glowed once more with pleasure. There was in his look an expression of acknowledged kinship, as of one refined soul to another, a kind of subtle flattery which pleased while it puzzled the girl. Men with eyes of that appeal were not common in her world.

The bitter look vanished out of her face. She gazed after the trailer with the unabashed interest of a child, wondering who he might be. In that instant her soul, impressionable and eager, received and retained, like a sensitive plate, every line of his figure, every minute modelling of his face—even his fashion of saddle and the leather of his gun-case remained with her as food for reflection, and as she loitered down the trail a wish to know more about him rose in her heart. There was a kind of smiling ecstasy on his face before he saw her—as if he, too, were transported by the scene, and this expression came at last to be the chief revelation of his character.

There was in his look an expression of acknowledged kinship.

"THERE WAS IN HIS LOOK AN EXPRESSION OF ACKNOWLEDGED KINSHIP"ToList

The red went out of the sky. The golden eagle of cloud flew home over the illimitable seas of saffron, the purple shadows rose in the valleys, the lights of the town began to sparkle. Engine-bells clanged to and fro, and the strains of a saloon band rose to vex the girl's poetic soul with repugnant remembrances of the dance-hall. "I suppose he is only camping through," she thought, a little wistfully, referring back to the stranger. "I wish I knew who he is."

As she came down to the level of the stream its friendly roar cut off the ribald music and the clamor of the engines precisely as the bank shut away the visible town, leaving the little row of pretty cottages in the ward of the mountains and the martial, ranked, and towering firs.

At the foot of the trail a gray-haired woman met her. It was her mother, disturbed, indignant. "Viola Lambert, what do you mean by staying up there after dark? I'm all a-tremble over you."

"It isn't dark, mother," answered the girl; "and if it were, it isn't the first time I've been out alone."

Mrs. Lambert's voice softened. "Child, I can hardly see your face! You must not do such things. I don't mind your being out on horseback, but you must not go up there afoot. It is dangerous with all these tramp miners coming and going."

"Well, don't scold—I'm here safe and sound."

"I haven't had such a turn for years, Viola," the mother explained, as they waited side by side along the narrow walk. "I had an impression—so vivid—that I dropped my work and ran to find you. It was just as if you called me, asking for help. It seemed to me that some dreadful thing had happened to you."

"But nothing did. I went up to see the sunset. I didn't meet a soul." She ended abruptly, for she did not wish to retrace her sad reverie.

"Who were the two men who came down just now? They must have passed you."

"Yes, they passed me—I didn't know them. The one behind looked like an 'expert.' Perhaps he has come to examine the San Luis mine. Some one said they were expecting a man from England."

"He looked more like a Frenchman to me."

"It may be he is," answered Viola, restrainedly.

They turned in at a rustic gateway opening into the yard of a small and very pretty log-cabin which seemed a toy house, so minute was it in contrast to the mighty, fir-decked wall of gray and yellow rock behind it. Flowers had been planted along the path, and through the open door a red-shaded lamp shone like a poppy. Plainly it was the home of refined and tasteful women, a place where tall, rude men entered timidly and with apologies.

"Was there any mail?" asked the girl, as she put aside her hat.

"Not a thing."

The shadow deepened on her small, sensitive face. "Oh, why don't the girls write? they should know how horribly lonely it is here. I'm tired of everything to-day, mother—perfectly stone-blue. I don't like what I am; I'm tired of church-work and the people here. I want to go back East; I want to change my life completely."

The mother, a handsome woman, with fresh, unlined face, made no reply to this outburst. "Gusta won't be back until late; we will have to get our own supper."

The girl seemed rather pleased at this opportunity to do something, and went to her work cheerfully, moving with such grace and lightness that the mother stood in doting admiration to watch her; she was so tall and lithe and full-bosomed—her one treasure.

As she worked, the shadow again lifted from the girl's face, a smile came back to her scarlet lips, and she sang underbreath as only a young maiden can sing to whom love is a wonder and marriage a far-off dream.

She recalled the look which lay on the face of the man who was riding with bared head in ecstasy of the scene above and below him; but, most of all, she dwelt upon the gracious and candid glance of admiration with which he greeted her and which he repeated as he disappeared below her to be seen no more.

This look went with her to her room, and as she sat at her window, which opened upon the river, she wondered whether he had gone into camp in the pine groves just below the bridge, or whether he had taken lodgings at the hotel.

She had lovers—no girl of her charm could move without meeting the admiring glances of men; but this stranger's regard was so much more subtly exalting—it held an impersonal quality—it went beyond her entire understanding, adding an element of mystery to herself, to him, and to the sunset.

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IIIToC

THE MAN

Meanwhile the young tourist had alighted before the door of the principal hotel, and, after writing his name in a clear and precise hand on the book in the office, had hastened to his supper, carrying a most vivid recollection of the slender figure and flushed and speaking face of the girl on the trail. That moment of meeting, accidental and fleeting, had already become a most beautiful climax of his pilgrimage. "She was born of the sunset; she does not really exist," he said, with unwonted warmth of phrase. "How could this little mining town produce so exquisite a flower?"

His grosser needs supplied, he lit his big student's pipe and went out upon the upper story of the hotel's rude porch, and there sat, listening to the rush of the stream, while the great yellow stars appeared one by one above the lofty peaks, and the air grew crisp to frostiness. He was profoundly at peace with the world and himself, his physical weariness being just sufficient to give this hour a sound completeness of content.

As the beauty of the night deepened, the girl's beauty allured like the moon. He still sought to explain her. "She is some traveller like myself," he said, "Bret Harte to the contrary, notwithstanding, the wilderness does not produce maids of her evident refinement and grace. She comes of a long line of well-bred people."

He was not an emotional person, and had not been permitted to consider pleasure the chief object, even of a vacation, but he went to his bed that night well pleased with Colorow, and with a half-defined sense that this was, after all, the point towards which his long journey, with all its windings, had really tended. However, he was not ready to acknowledge that a large part of the charm of the place was due to the glamour of a slender maid lit by the sunset light.

This delight in the town and its surroundings gained a new quality next morning as he looked from his window upon a single white cloud resting like a weary swan on the keen point of old Kanab. Though the mesas of New Mexico and the deserts of Arizona were his special field, he bared his head to the charm of "the high country."

Each summer, after months of prolonged peering into the hidden heart of microscopic things in his laboratory (he was both analytical chemist and biologist), it was his custom to return for a few weeks to huge, crude synthetic, nature for relief. After endless discussion of "whorls of force" and of "the office of germs in the human organism," he enjoyed the racy vernacular of the plainsman, to whom bacteria were as indifferent as blackberry-seeds. Each year he resolved to go to the forest, to the lake regions, or to the mountains; but as the day of departure drew near the desert and the strange peoples living thereon reasserted their dominion, and so he had continued to return to the sand, to the home of the horned toad and the rattlesnake. These trips restored the sane balance of his mind. To camp in the chaparral, to explore the source of streams, and to relive the wonder of the boy kept his faculties alert and keen.

His love of the sands and the purple buttes of the plain did not blind him to the beauty of coloring and the gracious majesty of these peaks, clothed as they were with the russet and gold and amber of ripened grasses, which grew even to the very summits (only the kingliest of the peaks were permitted to wear the ermine robes which denoted sovereignty); the Continental Divide was, indeed, much more impressive than he had expected it to be.

He was not one of those who seek out strange women, and he had no hope of meeting the girl of the mountain-side again. He was content to have her remain a poem—a song of the sunset—a picture seen only for a moment, yet whose impression outlasts iron. Everything in nature had converged to make her momentous. His long stay among the ugly, dusky women of the desert, his exultant joy in the mountain sunset, and his abounding health (which filled his heart with the buoyancy of a boy)—all these causes combined to revive emotions which his absorption in scientific investigation had set in the background—emotions which concern the common man, but which the deeply ambitious chemist, eager to discover the chemical molecular structure of the plasm, must put aside with a firm hand.

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IVToC

A SECOND MEETING

Viola was just leaving her mother's gate the following afternoon when a man's voice, cordial, assured, and cultivated, startled her.

"Good-morning. Is this your home?"

She looked up to meet the smiling eyes of the stranger horseman. Again an indefinable charm of manner robbed his greeting of offence, and quite composedly she replied:

"Yes, this is our home."

"What a view you have, and what music!" He indicated the river which ran white and broad over its pebbles, just below the walk. "I am enchanted with the place. I think you must love it very much."

Her face expressed a qualified assent. "Oh yes, but I get tired of it sometimes, especially in winter when we are all shut in with snow."

"Then you really are a year-round resident? I suppose my view is the tourist's view. I can't believe anybody lives here in winter. I hope you won't mind my introducing myself"—he handed her a card. "You made such a pretty picture up there beside the trail yesterday that I couldn't forbear speaking to you on a second meeting. I wanted to know whether you were real or just a fragment of sunset cloud."

The ease and candor of his manner, joined to the effect of the name on the card, fully reassured her, and she looked up with a smile. "Won't you come in and rest?"

"Thank you, I should like particularly to do so, I've been for a climb up that peak behind your cottage and I'm tired."

Her reserve quite melted, the girl led the way to the door where her mother stood in artless wonder.

"Mother, this is Dr. Serviss, of Corlear College."

"I'm glad to know you, sir," said Mrs. Lambert, with old-fashioned formality. "Won't you come in?"

"Thank you. It will be a pleasure."

"Are you a physician?" she asked, as she took his hat and stick.

"Oh, dear, no! Nothing so useful as that. I'm a doctor by brevet, as they say in the army." Then, as though acknowledging that his hostess was entitled to know a little more about her intrusive guest, he added: "I am a student of biology, Mrs. Lambert, and assistant to Dr. Weissmann, the head of the bacteriological department of Corlear Medical College. We study germs—microscopic 'bugs,'" he ended, with humorous glance at Viola. "What a charming bungalow you have here! Did you gather those wild flowers?"

Viola answered in the tone of a pupil to her master, "Yes, sir.""But some of them grow high. You must be a mountaineer. Pardon my curiosity—it is inexcusable—but how long have you lived here?"

The mother looked at her daughter for confirmation. "Eight years."

"Of course you are from the East?"

"Yes, from Wisconsin."

He laughed. "We call Wisconsin a Western State. Of course, it's the ignorant prejudice of the New-Yorker, but I find it hard to think of you as actual residents of this far-away little town. I thought only miners lived here?"

"We are miners. My husband has a mine up in the Basin, but he's putting in some new machinery just now and is unable to come down but once a week." Then mildly resenting his implied criticism of the town, she added: "We have just as nice people here as you'll find anywhere."

He responded gallantly, "I am quite prepared to believe that, Mrs. Lambert. But do many nice people like you live here all the year round?" He was bent on drawing the girl out, but she did not respond.

The mother answered: "I haven't been away except to take my daughter East to school."

He was cautious. "By East you mean Milwaukee?"

"Diamond Lake, Wisconsin."

He turned to the girl. "How long were you away?"

"Four years."

"Did you like it?"

"Very much.""That is the reason you find it lonesome here." Up to this moment his attitude was that of a teacher towards a pretty pupil. "You miss your classmates, I suppose? Still there must be diversions here, even for a young girl."

The mother sighed. "It really is very lonesome here for Viola—if it weren't for her church work and her music I don't know what she'd do. There are so few young people, and then her years at the seminary spoiled her for the society out here, anyway."

"So much the worse for Colorow society," laughed Serviss. Then, to clear the shadow which had gathered on the girl's face, he said: "I see a fine piano, and shelves of music books. This argues that you love music. Won't you sing for me? I am hungry for a song."

"I do not sing," she replied, coldly, "I have no voice."

"Then play for me. I have been for eight weeks on the desert and I am famishing for music."

"Are you a musician?" asked Mrs. Lambert.

"Oh no, only a music-lover."

"My daughter is passionately fond of the piano," the mother explained, "and her teachers advised her to go on and make a specialty of it. They recommended Boston, but Viola wants to go to New York. She wanted to go last year, but I couldn't let her go. I'd been without her for four years, and Mr. Lambert's affairs wouldn't permit us both to go, and so she had to stay; but it does seem too bad for one as gifted as she is to give it up."At this moment Serviss changed his entire attitude towards these people. They were too genuine, too trustful, and too fine to permit of any patronization, and the girl's dignified silence and the charm of her pellucid eyes and rose-leaf lips quite transmuted him from the curious onlooker to the friend. "I can understand your dilemma," he said, with less of formal cheer and more of genuine sympathy. "And yet, if your daughter has most decided talent it is only fair to give her a chance to show what she can do."

The girl flushed and her eyes fell as the mother bent towards her visitor.

"I wish you would listen to her play, Dr. Serviss, and tell me what you think of her talent."

His eyes shone with humor. "I will listen with great pleasure; but don't ask a chemist to judge a pianist. I love music—it is a sweet noise in my ears—but I can hardly distinguish Chopin from Schumann." He faced the girl. "Play for me. I shall be very deeply indebted." As she still hesitated he added: "Please do, or I will certainly think you consider me intrusive."

As Viola slowly rose, Mrs. Lambert said: "You must not feel that way, Dr. Serviss. We are highly honored to entertain one so eminent as you are. I was brought up to value learning. Play for him, Viola."

"What is the reason for her reluctance?" Serviss asked himself. "Is it shyness? Or does she resent me?"With a glance of protest at her mother the girl took her seat at the piano. "I will try," she said, bluntly. "But I know I shall fail."

Twice she laid her hands upon the keys only to snatch them away again as if they were white-hot metal, and Serviss fancied her cheek grew pale. The third time she clashed out a few jarring chords intermixed with quite astonishing roulade on the treble—an unaccountable interruption, as if a third hand had been thrust in to confuse her. She stopped, and he began to share her embarrassment.

She tried again, shaking her head determinedly from side to side as if to escape some invisible annoying object. It seemed as if some mocking sprite in the instrument were laboring to make her every harmony a discord, and Serviss keenly regretted his insistence.

Suddenly she sprang up with an impatient, choking cry. "I can't do it! He won't let me!" she passionately exclaimed, and rushed from the room leaving her visitor gazing with pity and amazement into the face of the mother, who seemed troubled but in no wise astounded by her daughter's hysterical action. She sat in silence—a painful silence, as if lacking words to express her thought; and Serviss rose, rebuked, and for the first time ill at ease.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lambert; I didn't intend to embarrass your daughter."

"She is very nervous—"

"I understand. Being a complete stranger, I should not have insisted. One of the best singers I ever knew was so morbidly shy that on the platform she was an absolute failure. Her vocal chords became so contracted that she sang quite out of tune, and yet among friends she was magnificent."

The mother's voice was quite calm. "It was not your fault, sir. Sometimes she's this way, even when her best friends ask her to play. That's why I fear she will never be able to perform in concerts—she is liable to these break-downs."

He was puzzled by something concealed in the mother's tone, and pained and deeply anxious to restore the peaceful charm of the home into which he had, in a sense, unbiddenly penetrated. "I am guilty—unpardonably guilty. I beg you to tell her that my request was something more than polite seeming—I was sincerely eager to hear her play. Perhaps at another time, when she has come to know me better, she will feel like trying again. I don't like to think that our acquaintance has ended thus—in discord. May I not come in again, now that I am, in a sense, explained?"

He blundered on from sentence to sentence, seeking to soften the stern, straight line on the mother's lips—a line of singular repression, sweet but firm.

"I wish you would come again. I should really like your advice about Viola's future. Can't you come in this evening?"

"I shall be very glad to do so. At what hour?""At eight. Perhaps she will be able to play for you then."

With a feeling of having blundered into a most unpleasant predicament, through a passing interest in a pretty girl, Serviss retreated to his hotel across the river.

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VToC

PUPIL AND MASTER

Once out of the spell of the immediate presence of this troubled mother and her appealing daughter, Serviss began to doubt and to question. "They are almost too simple, too confiding. Why should Mrs. Lambert, at a first meeting, accidental and without explanation, ask me to take thought of her daughter's future?" The fact that his connection with an institution of learning gave him a sort of sanctity in their eyes did not weigh with him. He was of those who take professorships in the modern way—with levity, either real or assumed.

"I think, on the whole, I'd better keep out of this family complication, whatever it may be," he concluded. "This absence of the husband in the hills may be more significant than at present appears—it may be a voluntary sequestration. I take the hint. I am not seeking new responsibilities, and I don't care to act as adviser, even to a pretty girl—especially not to a pretty girl." And he waved his hand in the manner of one declining a doubtful cigar.

But this slim young witch, with the scarlet lips and pleading gray eyes, was not so easily banished. His inward eye dwelt upon her with increasing joy, "How beautiful she was, as she stood there on that bowlder! Perhaps she was posing? She is now at the very height of her girlish charm. What an appeal she must make to the men of this region—those exquisite lips—that pliant waist—that full bosom! There is some antagonism between mother and daughter—something more than appears on the surface. She is both sullen and hysterical. What a pity!"

She continued to trouble him as he sat again after his evening meal on the veranda of the hotel. He could hear the slow tramp of heavy boots along the sidewalks beneath him, and the roar of the Colorow, softened by distance, rose and fell like a drowsy tune. On the highest peaks the after-glow still lingered, and from one of the little cottages deep in the shadow across the stream a light appeared like a signal, an invitation, and, the blood in him being young, accepted the lure. He rose with the impulse. "I'm going! Why not? 'Tis a night for adventure. There's no need of involving myself in any wise with their future. I'm an outsider, and will take precious good care to stay so." His face was impassive, but his heart was quick within him as he set foot on the bridge. "Perhaps this is my Rubicon?" he said, and paused with a moment's irresolution.

His doubt, his suspicion, instantly vanished as he re-entered the pretty little sitting-room and faced the sweet-visaged mother, who tacitly acknowledged her daughter as the cause of his coming by saying:"Viola has just stepped over to the parsonage. She will return in a moment. Won't you please be seated?"

Serviss took a chair, quite ready—even eager—to listen to the further confidences which he perceived his hostess was about to give him.

"I hope you won't think it strange, professor—"

He interrupted her. "Please don't call me professor."

"I beg your pardon, sir. I understood that you were a professor in a university."

She seemed disappointed, and he explained: "It's true I am in the hand-book as a member of the faculty, and I plead guilty to the degree of doctor of philosophy—that I am proud of; but to be called professor robs me of my young humanity." This humorous explanation seemed to confuse her, and he added, kindly and naturally: "Really, Mrs. Lambert, I am a chemist and experimentalist in biology. I have no class-room work, because the college prefers to have me make what they call 'original investigation.' And, pray, let me say that while I am very willing to assist your daughter, or to advise you in any way, I see very little of musical New York. My work confines me to my 'shop' very closely, and when I go out I associate almost wholly with my peculiar kind. However, I can easily secure information as to the best schools of music, for I have several friends who know all about it. I interrupted you—please continue."This pleasant, straightforward speech restored her confidence. "I think I was about to say, sir, that it may seem strange to you that I should so suddenly ask your advice, but, you see—"

"Oh, not at all," he genially interrupted. "I am consulted on all kinds of matters; in fact, I pass for a real doctor—out on the trail. I carry a little medicine-case for emergencies, and I assume all the authority of the regular practitioner—on occasion. I shall be very sorry if my distaste for the title 'professor' leads you to think me unsympathetic. I shall be very glad to assist you in any way."

"Thank you. You see, I was brought up to esteem learning, and we seldom meet one of your eminence—we are so completely out of the world here—it is a great pleasure to us—"

Footsteps just outside of the screen-door announced the return of the girl, who entered composedly, followed by a young man. Her manner was cold, her glance aloof, as she greeted Serviss.

"I'm glad you came," she said. "I was afraid you would forget us." She turned towards her escort, who had halted in the doorway. "Professor Serviss, this is the Reverend Mr. Clarke, the pastor of our church."

As Serviss shook hands with the Reverend Clarke he experienced a distinct shock of repulsion—an unaccountable feeling, for the clergyman was decidedly handsome, at first sight. But his hand was cold, his face pallid, and a bitter line, the worn pathway of a sneer, curved at one corner of his mouth. "Unwholesome, anÆmic," was Serviss's inward comment as he turned away to address the girl, whose change of manner exerted a new witchery over him.

She was dressed in black for some reason, and her face seemed both sad and morose, but the graceful dignity of her strong young body was enhanced by her dark gown. Her hands, her feet, were shapely, without being dainty. "Plainly these women come of good stock, no matter what the husband and father may be," Serviss thought. He resented the clergyman's intrusive presence more and more. "Is he brought in as a safeguard?" he asked himself.

Mr. Clarke's attitude was certainly forbidding. He perched in grim, expectant silence on the edge of his chair, waiting, watching. His lean face had the blue-white look of the much-shaven actor, and his manner was as portentous as that of a tragedian.

"What the devil does he mean by staring at me like that?" Serviss continued to ask himself. "Does he expect me to go off like a bomb?"

He had started a discussion of the weather or some other harmless topic, when Clarke began, in a deep voice, with the formal inflections of the parson: "Miss Lambert tells me you are from Corlear University, professor?"

Serviss groaned and threw up his hands with a comical gesture. "Well, let it go at that. I suppose it explains me to call me 'professor.' Yes, I have a connection there—I draw a salary from the institution."The clergyman regarded him soberly, as did the women, without sharing his humor in the least. Evidently being a professor in a university was no light thing to a Western preacher. "She tells me you have proposed to act as her adviser—"

Again Serviss protested. "Oh, nothing so formidable as that, my dear sir. I have promised to make inquiries for her." Then, obscurely moved to create a better impression in the girl's mind, he added: "I shall be very happy, of course, to do all that is in my power to aid you, Miss Lambert, but, as I have just been saying to your mother, I can only act through my friends. Nobody enjoys music more than I, but no one can possibly know less about it. In these days of specialization one is forced to one's own little groove in order to achieve practical results. General culture is impossible to specially trained sharps like myself."

"What is your specialty, may I ask?" inquired Clarke, remotely.

"I usually answer 'bugs,' but when I wish to be quite understood I explain that I am a physiological chemist and biologist. At the present moment I am assistant in the pathological department of the Corlear Medical College."

The preacher seemed to lighten a little. "Ah! that is a noble study, a study of incalculable service to mankind. I am deeply interested in that line of thought myself—I may say vitally interested, for I suffer from lung trouble. One by one the germs of disease are being discovered and their antitoxins catalogued." It was evident that he was anxious to impress the women with his wonderful understanding of the scientist's work and aims.

His tone was so sententious that Serviss instantly became flippant, as an offset. "Yes, one by one we round 'em up! But don't think me unfriendly to the 'beasts.' They have their uses. I'd no sooner kill a bacterium than a song-bird. I think we care too highly for the cancerous and the consumptive. I'm not at all sure that humanity oughtn't to be hackled like weeds, and so toughen its hold on life. Germs may be blessings in disguise."

Clarke pursued his way. "How little we know about their reactions—their secretions. You've given some attention to the X-ray and its effect on these cells, I presume?"

Serviss inwardly grinned to think what Weissmann would say at sight of his assistant sitting in solemn discussion of the germs and X-rays with a village clergyman and two reverential women. "Why, yes, I've considered it. Naturally, any new thing that bears on my specialty makes me sit up. I've even done a little experimenting with it."

"But have you considered the bearing of all these subtleties of science upon"—he hesitated—"a—upon certain—a—occult phenomena?"

Serviss eyed him non-committally. "Well, what, for instance?"

"Well, upon, say, telepathy—and—a—well, upon spiritual healing—and the like.""I can't say that I have; I don't exactly see the connection. Furthermore, I don't believe in these particular delusions. My work concerns the material facts of life, not the dying superstitions of the race. I have no patience with any morbid theory of life."

This remark plainly produced a sensation. The preacher cast a significant glance at the mother, and the girl looked away at the lamp, a flush upon her face.

"Hello!" exclaimed Serviss, under his breath. "Have I discovered a neat of cranks? I've been enlisted on somebody's side—I wonder whose?"

The clergyman faced him again and calmly asked: "Have you ever investigated these occult phenomena?"

"Certainly not. I have no time to waste on such imaginings. My time is all taken in a study of certain definite processes in the living organism."

A light began to glow in the eyes of the young clergyman. "I suppose you class mental healing among the delusions?"

"Most assuredly I do," answered Serviss, with the remorselessness of youth.

"You would say that the mind of man cannot mend the body of another—"

"If you mean directly—in the manner of 'faith cures' and the like—I would answer certainly not, unless the disorder happens to be in itself due to a delusion. I can imagine the hypochondriac being cured by mental stimulus." He felt that he was drawing near the point at issue, and his eyes shone with glee.

The preacher set his trap. "You believe in the action of a drug—say, prussic acid—you believe it will kill?"

"Yes, and quite irrespective of the opinion of the one who takes it. His thinking it water will not check or change its action in the slightest degree."

"But how does it kill?" persisted Clarke. "What does it do?"

"If you mean why, at the last analysis, does one drug attack cells and the other nourish them, I answer, frankly, I don't know—nobody knows."

Clarke pursued his point. "Under the microscope, the germ of, say, tetanus is a minute bar with spore at the end like the head of a tadpole. Of what is this cell composed?"

"Probably of a jelly-like substance with excessively minute filaments, but we don't know. We are at the limit of the microscope. We trace certain processes, we even dissect certain cells, but elemental composition of plasm remains a mystery."

The preacher glowed with triumph. "Then you confess yourself baffled? The union of matter and spirit is beyond your microscope. What do you know about a drop of water? You say it is formed of hydrogen and oxygen in such and such proportions. What is hydrogen? Why do they unite?"

"I don't know," calmly replied Serviss. "We admit that any material substance remains inexplicable. The molecule lies far below the line of visibility. We only push the zone of the known a little farther into the realm of the unknown; but how does that serve your argument?"

"By demonstrating that the mind of a man is simply the mastering mystery in a world of mysteries, and that there is no known limit to what it may do. We say that at the point where life enters to differentiate the germ is beyond science—there of necessity faith is born."

"You say 'we'—are you an apostle of 'the new church'?" asked Serviss, abruptly.

The preacher visibly shrank. "I do not care to announce my growing conviction to my congregation, at present; but I find many things about the doctrine which appeal to me. Some form of spiritism is the coming religion—in my judgment. The old order changeth. The traditional theology—the very faith I preach—has become too gross, too materialistic, for this age; some sweeter and more mystic faith is to follow. Even science is prophesying new power for man, new realms for the spirit. You men of science pretend to lead, but you are laggards. You pore upon the culture of germs, but shut your eyes to the most vital of all truths. Is the life beyond the grave of less account than the habits of animalculÆ?"

The young scientist listened to this query with outward courtesy, but inwardly his gorge rose. "I see one gain in your new position," he answered, lightly. "Matter is no longer the dead, inorganic, 'godless thing' which the old-time theologians declared it to be. Matter, so far from being some inert lump, is permeated with life—is life itself. So far as we now know, all the visible and tangible universe is resolvable into terms of force—that is to say, chemical process. There may be no line of demarcation between the organic and the inorganic."

"And yet with your knowledge of the inscrutable final mystery of matter you set a mark at the grave! You condemn all manifestation of the spirit, all the phenomena of spiritism, for example?"

"Condemn is not the word—we simply say the phenomena are absurd, the spirit cannot exist without the body—"

"Have you ever investigated a single form of spirit manifestation? Have you studied the claims of those who are in touch with the spirit world?"

"No."

The preacher's sneer broke forth. "I can't see but you scientists are quite as dogmatic, quite as bigoted as the theologians."

Serviss laughed. "It does look a little that way. However, I'm not as uninformed as I seem. It happens that I am in close personal contact with men whose specialty is the study of morbid psychology, and I know the quality of those who act as mediums for the return of the dead." The intensity of the interest on the part of the little group before him was astonishing, not to say appalling. "It is evident that the mother and her pastor are both of the new dispensation or worse," was his thought, but his natural courtesy led him to say, placably: "There are mysteries in the world, I admit—in chemistry as in biology—but they seem to me to be different in very essence from the 'mysteries' of spiritualism and all allied 'psychic phenomena,' which appear to me essentially absurd, ignoble—'ratty,' to use a slang phrase—a faith founded upon things done in the dark, always in the dark."

The preacher flamed out at this. "I knew you would get round to that; that is the reason why I began by drawing you out on the X-ray. How little do we know of motion! The X-ray moves in straight lines, I understand, while light has a wave motion. Hence they are antagonistic. May it not be that the spirits of those gone before manifest by means of an unknown force which light neutralizes? May this not be the explanation why the phenomena of the spirit world require darkness?"

"It may," answered Serviss, dryly; "but there is a far easier explanation—But, see here," he returned to his boyish humor, "this is my vacation. I came out here to escape 'shop,' and here we are wasting time on X-rays and spiritism, and boring our patient hostess besides. Miss Lambert, won't you play for us and clear the air of our controversial dust?"

The girl, who had been sitting during this conversation in rigid immobility, intent on every word, now turned towards Clarke as if asking his consent. The mother, too, seemed to wait anxiously for the minister's answer, as if wondering whether he would willingly cut short his interrogation.

His eyes were still glowing with the heat of controversy, but he gravely said: "I hope you will give me another opportunity to discuss this matter. It is very important to me."

"Certainly, with pleasure," answered Serviss, glad to rid himself of the discussion of the moment.

As Viola stood slowly turning the leaves of her music, three loud knocks sounded upon the inner door, as if an insistent neighbor had entered and signalled for help. The mother rose and went out hurriedly, but the clergyman merely glanced after her, and said to the girl:

"You would better play, Viola."

The girl dashed into a stormy Polish march, which she played very well, but with a mechanical precision which seemed to offend Clarke, who rose and laid his hand on her arm. "Wait, you're not in the mood yet." He turned to Serviss. "The spirit of our discussion is upon her. She is very sensitive to such things. I will sing first—if you don't object," he added, in a new tone, a touch of apology in his voice, and he gave out the effect of addressing an unseen auditor—some one in the inner room.

"I shall be delighted," replied Serviss, with formal politeness, though he began to apprehend something morbidly forbidding in the minister and in his influence on the girl. An extraordinary intimacy was revealed, not so much in the words he spoke as in the tones he used. "Here is the girl's lover," he decided.There was no timidity or hesitation in Viola's manner as she struck the first chords of an old ballad, and Clarke, transformed by a new and lofty mood, sang, with notable beauty of phrasing, "The Banks o' Ben Lomond." Something in the melancholy of the lover's cry seemed to fit with this singular young preacher's mood. His voice searched the heart, his eyes misted with feeling, and when he finished Serviss applauded most fervently, "Bravo!" and impulsively offered his hand.

"My dear fellow, you have a wonderful voice. You are the one to go to New York; you'd make Carolus look to his laurels. Sing something else—something of Strauss. Do you know Strauss?"

Clarke smiled with wistful sadness. "I sing very few ballads. My voice was given me to use in Christ's service, not for the gratification of my pride."

Serviss recoiled before this sanctimonious speech, and the light went out of his face. A disgust which he could not entirely conceal crossed his lips. "My dear sir, you can't serve the Lord better than by singing beautiful songs to the weary people of this earth. To wear out a voice like that on pinchbeck hymn tunes is a crime." Then, as if becoming conscious of a neglect of the girl, he added: "Now that you are in the mood, Miss Lambert, you must try that sonata again."

The girl seemed not to be offended by his enthusiasm over the minister's singing, and with a word in a low voice to Clarke, who placed a sheet of music before her, she began to play, opening the composition with unexpected breadth and dignity of phrasing. Serviss listened with growing amazement. Her hands were not large, but they had ample spread and were under perfect control. There was power in the poise of her head and in the rhythmic swaying of her body, but her playing was curiously unfeminine. There was no touch of girlish grace, of sentiment, in her performance, and with a sudden enlightenment Serviss inwardly exclaimed: "Aha! A clerical Svengali! This musical preacher has trained his pupil till she plays as he would play if he had the digital facility. It's all fine, but it is not the girl," and the question of their relationship again engaged him.

"SERVISS LISTENED WITH GROWING AMAZEMENT"ToList

When the final stormy note was still, Viola remained on her stool, as though waiting for her critic to applaud.

Serviss broke the silence by exclaiming: "See here, you people are making game of me. You are both professionals in disguise. Come now, 'fess up," he challenged Clarke. "You are SeÑor Del Corte, barytone of the Salt-Air Opera Company; and you, Miss Lambert, belong to the Arion Ladies' Orchestra. I have found you both out!"

The girl smiled with pleasure, but Clarke remained so unassailably serious that Serviss was moved to further deeps of audacity. "Don't tell me you are a comedian, also! You certainly have me guessing. Who are you, really?"

Clarke answered, resentfully: "I am the pastor of the Presbyterian church in this village, as Miss Lambert has told you, and she is my organist."

Again that thump three times repeated sounded upon the door. Serviss, baffled and silenced by Clarke's impenetrable gravity, and by something inexplicably submissive, yet watchful, in the face of the girl, felt himself confronted by an intangible, sinister, and inescapable influence. The young clergyman seemed to darken and oppress both women. It was as if they were all leagued in a conspiracy to deceive and cajole. This bewilderment lasted but a moment, and he rose from his chair with a spring. "Well, now, play something else—give us a bit of rag-time; that last piece has left us all a little dashed—try a cake-walk."

Clarke interposed. "Miss Lambert does not play those trashy melodies. I consider them essentially irreligious."

Serviss resented the preacher's tone, but quickly answered: "They're not exactly reverent, I'll admit; but without them American music would be but a poor reflection of the German."

As if to save his reputation the preacher sang "The Palms," and sang it magnificently; and the girl accompanied him with such accuracy and good judgment that Serviss was able to infer long hours of practice, and this did not please him.

"His influence on her and on this household is not good," he decided. "That chap is decidedly morbid. If he is married, so much the worse. He's far too handsome to be a safe guide to an impressionable young girl. There is some mystery here," and he recalled that Viola's face was troubled when first he saw it. And at the close of this song, without a glance at the preacher, he offered a parting hand to Viola. "If I can be of any aid in putting you in touch with a teacher in New York, please write me. I think you have my card. You play with astonishing power and brilliancy. You would certainly interest a man like Greer."

Her face flamed with color—all her sullen restraint vanished, all her girlish charm came back. "Oh, do you think so? Do you suppose I could get him to teach me?"

"I don't say that—he is a very busy man—but I think you are decidedly to be encouraged. But I may be able to hear you again before I go. I want to hear you play alone."

"I wish you would come again." There was a subtle entreaty in her voice, almost a prayer; and in her uplifted face was expressed the respect and confidence of a child. His heart was moved with pity as well as with admiration, and, turning to the mother, he added: "I shall probably remain over Sunday, and it would be a pleasure if I might come again to your pretty home."

Mrs. Lambert's face glowed with pleasure. "It will be a great honor to have you, sir."

In this spirit he went away, without again taking Clarke's hand, with a last glance at the girl's face as she stood at the open door to let him pass. He turned from the gate with a sense of having been permitted a glance into the very heart of a secret drama which might at any moment become a tragedy. His interest was profoundly stirred, his sympathies wholly enlisted in behalf of this girl, so young and so aspiring.

As he stood above the roaring water he formulated a theory with regard to the relationship of the personalities he had just left behind him. "The girl is being persecuted by this man Clarke, who is madly in love with her. She has an inner repugnance to him; but he is a clergyman, and that means a great deal to a girl in the adoration stage. Her mother, a nice, religious sort of person, favors the preacher, of course; but the father probably despises him. Clarke is evidently losing his hold on the rock-ballasted keel of his creed, and in his shipwreck he may carry that girl down with him; such cases are all too common. If he is married, he is all the more dangerous. But it is not my duty to interfere." He ended, resolute to put the whole problem from him: "The girl has legal guardians—on them rests the blame if she is corrupted. To reform this world has never been my call."

But he could not rid himself of a growing sense of responsibility. His mind returned again and again to the complication into which he had suddenly been thrust. "Perhaps this desire on the part of the girl to go away to study is only an instinctive desire to escape. It would be like that preacher to have a worn, little, commonplace wife. What can Lambert be thinking of to let such a man come into his home and direct the daily life of both his wife and daughter? He is neglecting his plain duty."

He fell asleep, fancying himself on the way up the trail to the mine, and when he woke to find the good, rectifying rays of the morning sun filling his room the theories of the night were absurd. He desired to see the girl again, not to warn her of her peril, but because she was piquant and lovely, as befitted her romantic surroundings.

VIToC

IN THE MARSHALL BASIN

It must have been about eleven o'clock next morning when Serviss rode up and dismounted at the Lambert gate, and in the flaming light of mid-day the sense of mystification, the feeling that the girl was in the coils of some invisible menace, had entirely vanished. The preacher had sunk to the rÔle of a conceited clerical ass who regarded science as an enemy to his especial theories and the visible universe as an outlying province of Calvinism; while Viola, who came to the door, was again most humanly charming, delighting his eyes like the morning.

She smiled blithely and spoke collectedly, in response to his greeting; but when he asked her to be his guide to the wonders of the region her face clouded in dismay.

"Oh, I'm sorry; I wish I could; but I must carry a message up to my father at the mine."

"Very well, why not take me? I infer you go on horseback?"

She hesitated. "Yes, but it's a long, hard ride—and you said you were tired of the saddle."

"I was yesterday; but I feel quite rested now. By all means let me accompany you. I should particularly enjoy mounting high to-day. I should also like to meet your father."

"Very well, I will speak to mother," she replied, with shining face, and disappeared within.

The mother, mindful of Serviss's connection with a great university, made no objection to the plan. On the contrary, she was pleased and flattered by his interest in her daughter, and a few moments later the young people rode off up the mountain road side by side and in high spirits.

Serviss winced at times at the childish flatness of Viola's comment, but her voice was musical and her face flower-like—therefore he forgave her. With all his knowledge of the constitution of matter, he was still young and in the mating mood.

They talked of the flowers, of the trails, of the birds to be found on the heights for a time; but soon, inevitably, they came to talk of themselves. Under his questioning she outlined her plans for a musical education, and this led at last to a consideration of the Reverend Mr. Clarke.

At the first mention of his name the girl's face distinctly darkened and her answers became curiously studied, almost evasive—or so it seemed to Serviss.

"Yes, I play in his church," she said, "and he teaches me. He is a splendid musician—don't you think so? I owe a great deal to him. He has helped me so much—especially in my phrasing. He is a wonderful man. We are fortunate in having him with us.""He struck me as a little morbid, not to say morose. Has he had trouble in his church?"

Her answer was deep-toned and affectedly solemn in one so young. "No, but his wife passed out last year."

"Passed out? What do you mean by that?"

"I mean she died."

"Oh, I see!" His inflection checked her confidence, and they rode for a little way in silence.

Serviss was thinking. The situation is now clear. Clarke is working upon this sweet and charming girl in order to have her take the place of his dead wife. A sorrowful thing to think of, but not so bad as I have been imagining. At length he asked: "What else can you tell me about this Mr. Clarke? Is he a native of the West?"

"Oh no, he is from the East. He had a big church in Brooklyn; but his health gave out and he was forced to leave it. He came here for the baths and the air. He is much better now."

"He retains all his intellectual diseases, however. What medicine will he find for those?" Meeting the girl's startled glance, he hastened to add: "I beg your pardon, I was just wondering if he were as morbid when he came as he now seems."

"Oh no! He was quite cheerful till his wife went away. That changed him greatly. For months he hardly left his study. He reads too much even now. That is why he looks so pale. His house is packed with books.""He seems in need of fresh air. How does your father get on with him?"

"Not at all well."

"I inferred that. Your father is a man of deeds—of open air—I take it."

"Mr. Lambert isn't my own father," she took this opportunity to explain. "My own father passed to the other side when I was eleven."

"Pardon my curiosity, Miss Lambert, but you've used a phrase once or twice which I've heard the people of a certain faith use. Is your mother a spiritualist?"

She looked at him with timid eyes, then turned quickly away. "She—she used to be; she's studying theosophy now."

"And the minister is trying to convert you all to his especial theory! I can imagine his discourses. No wonder you want to flee."

The girl's whole face, voice, and manner changed—became bitter, passionate. "Oh, I hate it! I hate it! I want to be free of it all!"

The intensity of her utterance amazed Serviss, and he studied her profile in silence before he answered. "I think I know what you mean, and I sympathize with you. You're too young to be troubled by the doubts and dismays of men like Clarke. He is preposterous in the face of a landscape like this. Let us forget him and his 'isms.'" With these words he straightened in his saddle and lifted his eyes towards the height before them. "Isn't that superb!"

They were drawing near the great gray boundary-wall of the valley, and the sound of roaring water grew tumultuous as they rounded the curve in the road and came into the little triangular nook which had been anciently formed by the Colorow as it descended in power from its source in the high parks. On the left the ledges rose almost sheer for a thousand feet, and from the edge of this cliff ore-buckets, a-slide on invisible cables, appeared in the sky, swooping like eagles, silently dropping one by one, to disappear, tamely as doves, in the gable end of a huge, drab-colored mill which stood upon the flat beside the stream. Beyond the mill Mount Ignacio rose darkly purple, hooded in white clouds.

The entire scene was typical of the West, of its energy, its greed, and its faith. Here was life—life and buoyant health—and the blood of the young scientist quickened as he comprehended the daring, the originality of the miner's plan.

"Is this your father's enterprise?" he asked, in the hope of an affirmative answer. A man of this quality would hang the minister if necessary.

"Oh no. We've got to climb the hill and cross the upper Basin before we reach our mine. This is the ore from the San Luis tunnel."

She was, happily, of the sunny world now, and, with a gay smile, turned her horse into a narrow trail and called back to him: "We climb here." He followed, admiring the strength and grace of her rounded figure as her horse zigzagged up the steep acclivity. She was troubled by no problems at this moment. She was rather a daughter of the mountains, a sister to the eagles.

She stopped once or twice to permit him to locate the far-famed peaks rising one by one to the south of them, and the third time she drew rein he was a-foot, and she said, "We're almost to the top of this grade; it's easier in the Basin."

"I am thinking only of my horse," he answered. "You see, he is carrying a forty-pound saddle, and is not so fresh as yours. I'm sorry to delay you."

The Basin was a most glorious valley, bowl-shaped, green with grass and groves of aspen and fir, and flooded with a cataract of sunshine. All about it ran a rim of lofty summits, purple in shadow, garnet and gold and green in the sun. Here and there a prospect-hole showed like a scar, or a gray, dismantled stamp-mill stood like a disintegrating bowlder beside its yellow-gray dump of useless ore. Serviss, familiar with the rise and fall of the silver-miner, looked over the lovely valley with a certain sense of satisfaction, for he was able to reconstruct its beauty before that flood of devastating humankind swept up from the eastern plain. "Nature is reasserting her dominion," he said, aloud. "Mining is a wounding business—like murder."

The girl glanced away to the south. "We'll have to hurry if we reach camp by one o'clock," she called, and he waved his hand as a sign of surrender to her leadership.

They overtook a long train of burros bearing a most miscellaneous cargo of odds and ends of machinery, nail-kegs, iron-rods, bundles of bolts, lumber, oil, and boxes of groceries.

"This is all father's—all for the new mill," said the girl, nodding and smiling at the Mexicans in charge of the donkeys. "Hello, Clint!" she called, cheerily, to another muleteer, a little farther up the trail, a brown, good-looking young fellow, who saluted her joyfully, his eyes aglow with adoration.

"Every man is her suitor," thought Serviss, with a twinge of disapproval. "Think what she must seem to that leather-colored Arab urging forward those donkeys!" And a knowledge of her danger—he put it that way—began to oppress him. "She is too fine and sweet to marry among these rough miners."

She, it seemed, was not afraid of mountaineers, for she had a gay nod and a bright word for every one she met, though some of them were brutal-mouthed and grimy and sullen. Serviss derived no comfort from the fact that the most sinister of them brightened for an instant in the light of her adorable smile.

At last, far ahead, they came in sight of the mill on a bare peak. The white clouds which had been silently gathering round the great domes swiftly overspread the whole sky. The air grew chill as November. The wind began to roar in the firs with a stern mournfulness which went to the heart of the man; but the girl, without once stopping her horse, unrolled her raincoat and put it on, calling back at her cavalier as she did so with a fine, challenging, gleeful shout.They were very high now. Perennial ice lay in the gullies and on the north side of the cliffs, and the air was light and keen. Suddenly the wind died away. A gray hush came over the valley. The water in the streams lost its vivid green and became lead-color streaked with white foam. One by one the mountains were blotted out by the storm. The world of sky and rocks grew mysterious, menacing; but the girl pushed fearlessly forward, singing like a robin, while the rain slashed over her, and the thunder boomed and re-echoed from crag to crag like warning guns in magnificent alarums. "I love this!" she cried, her clear voice piercing the veil of water like a flute note. "Don't you?"

Serviss was not without imagination, and the contrast of this jocund, fearless, free young maid with the silent, constrained girl of the night before moved him to wonder. "Here she is herself—nature's own child," he thought. "Last night she was a 'subject'—a plaything of the preacher's. Strange the mother does not realize her daughter's danger."

The storm passed as quickly as it came, and when they drew rein at the mine the sun was shining. The mill, standing on a smooth, steep slope, and sheltered on the north by a group of low firs, seemed half a ruin, but was, in fact, being rebuilt and enlarged. All about it were dumps of clay, slippery with water, and rough bunk-houses and ore-sheds. All the structures were rude, masculine, utilitarian, and the girl grew each moment in delicacy and refinement by contrast.In answer to her halloo a plainly clad man came to the door, his face set in amazement.

"Why—see here—daughter! I wasn't looking for you to-day."

"I'm here just the same," she laughingly replied. "Here are some telegrams. Professor Serviss, this is my father."

Joseph Lambert was a small man, with shy, blue eyes and a low and gentle utterance. He carried his head leaning a little to the left and seemed a shade discouraged, almost melancholy. He was, however, a brave, silent, tireless little man, who had made one great fortune in silver-mines only to lose it in the panic. He was now cannily working a vein which had a streak of gold in it, and, like all miners, was just on the point of making a "strike." He was distracted with work, and, though cordial, could not at the moment give much time to his visitor.

"Well, now, Viola, you take Professor Serviss into the cook-house and feed him. I guess you'll find something left over. If not, you will have to scratch up something."

Viola thereupon led the way into the kitchen, greeting each man she met, cooks and waiters alike, with impartial, clear-eyed joyousness and trust, and when the food came on she ate without grimace or hesitation. The cook, a big, self-contained Chinaman, came in with a china cup.

"Use this klup—tin klup no good for lady." His voice was gruff and his manner that of one who compels a child to use a napkin; but it was plain he adored her. As she thanked him he shuffled away with an irrepressible grin.

All this produced in Serviss an uneasiness. To him she was a lamb venturing among wolves. "She should not expose herself to the coarse comment, the seeking eyes of these fellows," he indignantly commented, blaming the acquiescent mother and the absent-minded step-father. "This childlike trust is charming, but it is not war."

Her essential weakness of defence, her innocence, began to move him deeply, dangerously. He began to understand how she had turned to Clarke for companionship, not merely because he was a clergyman, but because he was a young man of more than usual culture and attainment, whose sympathy and counsel promised aid and comfort in her loneliness. "She does not love him; she merely admires certain sides of his character; she fears to marry him, and quite properly. His morbid faith would destroy her."

As they were returning to the office they met the young driver of the mule-train, and Viola introduced him as "Mr. Ward, of Boston."

He was tall and spare, with a fine, sensitive, boyish face—a face of refinement which his rough, gray shirt, faded leggings, and badly battered hat belied.

"Mr. Ward is out here for his health, also," Viola explained. "All the really nice people are 'one-lungers.'"

"Isn't it sad?" said Ward, gravely. "However, Miss Lambert is only partly right. I made my health an excuse. I'm here because I like it."

Serviss bent a keen look upon him. "You don't look as if you had ever been sick."

"I'm not. I came out here to escape college—and my father's business." He laughed. "But don't betray me. I'm supposed to be 'slowly improving.'"

There was something fine and hawklike in the young fellow's profile as he stood negligently leaning on the door-frame, his eyes on the flushed face of the girl; and Serviss experienced another pang of jealous pain—they were so young, so comely, so full of the fire and imagination of youth. At the moment his own fame and special tasks were of small account.

Upon their return to the office Lambert met them in the same absent-minded, apologetic way. "I'm just getting some new machinery into place and haven't a minute, but you must make yourself as much at home as you can. Viola will show you around."

Serviss protested that he needed no entertainment, that he was not tired, and that he was well content to sit in the door and smoke and watch the changing glory of the peaks, and this he did while Viola moved about among the workmen in earnest conversation with her step-father.

"She is explaining me," Serviss reasoned. "I wish I could hear what she says. It would be amusing to know myself as she sees me. I hope she doesn't think me middle-aged as well as wise."

Lambert listened to his daughter's words with attention, for a professor in a college was an exalted person in his eyes, and one of his chief regrets at the moment was that he was unable to say to Serviss, "I am a college man myself"; but this he could not do for the reason that the death of his father had taken him out of his class at the beginning of his third year, and put him at the head of a large family as its breadwinner.

"He looks like a very young man, almost a boy—too young to be a professor; but then"—here his eyes twinkled—"when I was at Jefferson all professors seemed old to me. What's he doing here?"

"Just riding through the mountains on his vacation."

"What does your mother think of him?"

"She likes him very much."

"Well, I won't make any objection, then."

Viola stared—then blushed furiously. "What do you mean?"

"Why, didn't you bring him up here to see how I liked him?"

She pounded him with her little brown fist while tears of mortification filled her eyes. "Now, you stop that! You're teasing me. Why, I've only known him three days."

He laughed silently, shaking his head. "Well, these things move quickly sometimes—and how was I to know but you'd known him in the East—you seemed so chummy-like—"

"You've spoiled everything," she wailed, deeply disturbed and painfully self-conscious. "You're mean to me."

He became instantly contrite. "There, now, don't you mind my joking. Of course I was fooling. It's all safe between us, anyway."

But the mischief was done. She forgave him, but never again would she be the same to him, to her mother, or to the imperturbable young man smoking his pipe beneath the firs. He was young—that was only too plain to her now; not so young as Clinton, but not the middle-aged person she had been fancying him to be.

As they were about to start on their homeward trail, Serviss sought opportunity to say: "Mr. Lambert, I met this man Clarke at your house last night, and I want to say that I don't think his influence on your family is particularly wholesome. He's morbid and given to fads."

Lambert replied: "I know what you mean, professor, and I believe you're right. I don't believe in him myself, and I don't take any stock in any of his notions, but my wife does. She thinks he's of the Covenant, somehow. I wish you'd talk with her and try to have her let up on Viola. I don't think they're doin' right by her. If she was my own girl I'd stop it—I would so." Then he added, in a curious tone, this vague defence: "As for Viola, she would be all right if they would leave her alone. She's gifted in a way I don't understand; but if she isn't twisted by Clarke's foolishness she's going to make some man a good wife. She's a good girl, and, as I say, if she was my own child I'd serve notice that this circle business should stop. I wish you'd talk to 'em. I don't count—but they'll listen to you. I'm glad to have met you. I hope you'll come up again. I'd like to mill that business over with you; it's all very curious, but I'm just plumb distracted with work now."

"I beg you not to apologize—it's time to start back, anyhow."

As they rode away down the valley, the girl silent and constrained, Serviss pondered Lambert's words, which were plainly directed against Clarke. His sense of responsibility was increased by Lambert's trust in him. "This won't do," he decided; "I must pull out or I will find myself laden with the woes of the entire family, and Clarke's distresses besides."

The girl was invested now with compelling pathos. Each mile they descended seemed to deepen the returning shadow on her face. The gayety, the buoyancy of the upward trail was gone. She was silent, constrained, and sad; and he set to work to restore her to the simple and girlish candor of the morning. He called attention to the wonders of the western sky. He shouted to induce echoes, and challenged her to a race, and at the last descent dared her to ride down in one of the ore-buckets, seeking to bring the smiles back to her lips.

She responded to his cheer, but not as before. Something clouded her clear glance—her smiles died quickly, and the poise of her head was less alert.When they had reached the wagon-road and he could ride by her side, he, too, became serious. "I hope I haven't given offence in any way, Miss Lambert? If I have, I assure you it was entirely unintentional, and I beg your pardon."

She looked away. "You have done nothing," she said, slowly.

"But you seem distinctly less friendly to me. I hope you didn't take anything I said concerning your mother's faith to heart. I had no intention of attacking her beliefs, but I must be honest with you—I don't like Mr. Clarke. There's something unwholesome about him, and what you've told me to-day is not reassuring. Evidently he took the death of his wife very hard, and it has added to his natural tendency towards a sort of spiritual monomania. As a matter of fact, he's more Spiritualist than Calvinist at present. Isn't that so?"

The girl's face grew sullen and weary. "Oh, I don't know, I'm tired of it all."

"He endlessly talks his grind, I suppose. How foolish, how sickly it all seems—here in the presence of uncontaminated nature! In such sunlight as this it seems insanity to sit in a book-walled room and grow bloodless with dreaming over insoluble problems. And yet a friend of mine told me that these towns, and especially California towns, were filled with seers and prophets. The occult flourishes in the high, dry atmosphere, those of the faith say. Don't you permit Clarke to destroy your love of nature, Miss Lambert; you belong to the sane and sunny world, and he has no right to bring his gloomy conceptions home to you. You are too young and too naturally joyous to be concerned with the problems of disease and death. You were made to be happy."

He ended with greater earnestness than he had intended to use, and the effect of his words on the girl was very great. She could not speak; tears were in her eyes, and her bosom heaved most piteously. His sense of her helplessness deepened, and he added, "Will you permit me to talk to Mr. Clarke about you and your plans?"

This seemed to alarm her. "No, no!" she cried out, distressfully. "Please don't say anything to him about me. It will do no good. You don't understand, and I can't tell you," she added, breathlessly.

"Very well," he said, soothingly; "but, remember, your case interests me exceedingly, and you may call on me at any time and I will gladly help."

She turned a pale and tearful face towards him and extended her hand.

"I thank you very, very much. You have helped me more than I can say."

During the remainder of the ride he discussed the springs, the source of the streams, the caverns, and other natural features of the scene, and had the satisfaction of seeing her face in a smile before he left her.

He went back to his hotel with a feeling of having spent six days in her company rather than six hours. She absorbed his entire thought, and so keen was his sense of her beleaguerment that he resolved to call upon Clarke in order to define his character and to understand his motives. "His passions or his doubt overshadow the girl's sky, and I'm going to find out whether his designs are those of friend or fiend." At the moment he had a feeling that they were those of a devouring fiend.

VIIToC

THE FORCES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Clarke's church typified the decaying faith of its pastor. Grass was serenely pushing up through the rotting planks of the walk which led from the street to the basement "study" just as the natural goodness and cheer of man returns to dominion through the barriers of custom. The paint was blistering and peeling from the clap-boarding on the sunny side of the main building, and in one of the windows a piece of shingle had been set to repair a broken pane. It had the appearance of neglected age.

"The preacher was right—the creed of his church, as of all others, in a lesser degree perhaps, is too crass, too mechanical, too childish to tally the ideals of a generation which is each day awakening to some new potency of matter, some wider conception of the universe."

On the study door, checked by the sun and worn by the rain, the tourist applied his knuckle, and a voice, formal and sonorous, called out, "Come in!"

Opening the door, which led directly into a dark little den with only one window, Serviss confronted Clarke reading by a green-shaded lamp, in whose light he appeared as pallid, as remote from the sun, as a monk of the Middle Ages.

He rose quickly upon recognizing his visitor. "I'm glad to see you, professor; I beg your pardon for not rising. I thought the knock came from my janitor. Take a seat, please." He gathered a handful of books from a yellow arm-chair and pushed it forward with his foot. "Your visit is most opportune. I was meditating a call at your hotel to-night. I wanted to get your idea concerning two or three scientific discoveries which seem to me to have a most important bearing on the welfare of the race."

Serviss became each moment more keenly aware of being face to face with a task which required all his tact, his self-possession, and his wit, for the man before him was immured in self-conceit, accustomed to carrying his point by a rush of words, and was, withal, a student possessed of unusual intellectual resource. He made a very handsome figure as he took his seat amid his books. His face, freshly shaven, gleamed like blue-white marble, and his abundant dark hair, drawn away from his brow by careless fingers, lay in a tumbled mass above his ear, adding a noticeably sculptural finish to his shapely head. His hands, thin, long, and restless, alone betrayed the excitement which the coming of this Master of the Germ engendered in him. He was eager to question, but he waited for his visitor to begin, which he did with manly directness.

"I have called to talk with you about Miss Lambert. She and her mother having honored me by asking my advice as to her study in New York, I would like to know whether you, as their pastor, counsel this movement on her part?"

The clergyman's sentient fingers sought, found, and closed tightly upon a ruler. "That I cannot answer directly," he said, slowly. "Miss Lambert's case is not simple. She is a very remarkable musician, that you know, and yet her talent is fitful. She sometimes plays very badly. I am not at all sure she has the temperament which will succeed on the music-stage."

"I made a somewhat similar remark to the mother myself."

"Moreover, her interests are not the only factors in the problem. Mrs. Lambert's life is bound up in her daughter, and without her she would suffer. The well-being of the family as a whole is against her going."

"You have your own interests, too, I dare say."

Clarke's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"It would be difficult to replace her here in your church-work, would it not?"

The clergyman returned to his candid manner. "It would, indeed. She is the only organist in the village, and is invaluable to me, especially in the Sunday-school."

"I am disposed to consider her interests, and not those of the mother and father, or even the church," pursued Serviss. "I am of those who recognize the rights of the young as of chief importance to the race."

Clarke seized upon this as a gage of battle. "The race! Oh, you inexorable men of science! What do we care for the race? We would save individuals. The race can take care of itself. The race is only an abstraction—it cannot suffer. Of what avail to the individual to know that the race is to be perfected a thousand years hence?"

"We wander," interposed Serviss, with decision. "The question is really quite simple. Shall we advise the Lamberts to send their daughter to New York to study music, or shall we counsel her to remain here, and in marriage to some good, honest young miner resign herself to the common lot of women. Her talent should determine."

A dull flush rose to the cheek of the preacher, his eyes fell and his voice unconsciously softened. "Marriage is still a long way off for Viola Lambert; she is but a child, and, besides—" He paused.

Serviss smiled. "They marry young in the West, I believe. Besides, she must be twenty, and quite robust."

"She seems but a child to me," repeated Clarke, returning to his clerical manner, and something in the hypocritical tone of his speech angered and disgusted Serviss, and to himself he said: "He is a fraud. He does not intend to let the girl pass out of his control." Then aloud he reopened the discussion: "It all comes back to a question of the girl's talent. If it is sufficient to enable her to earn a living in some larger community, she has a right to go; if not, she should certainly stay here. I believe in the largest possible life for every human being, and Miss Lambert's ambition is a perfectly legitimate craving. Furthermore, she seems eager to escape from this life. She hints at some sort of mysterious persecution. She has not defined her troubles in detail, but I inferred that some undesirable suitor made life miserable for her." With these words he bent a keen glance at Clarke.

"You are quite mistaken, sir. Miss Lambert has many admirers but no suitors. I have cautioned her against entanglements of that kind. I have shown how they would interfere with her work."

"You mean her work in your church?"

Clarke's eyes again took on the narrowed glance of suspicion. "Partly that, but more on account of other and higher work which I hope to see her do."

"To what do you refer?"

"Pardon me, of that I cannot at present speak; I can only say that it is a work whose preliminary stages can be passed as well here as in New York City—better, in fact."

"You arouse my curiosity—"

Clarke suddenly awoke from his musing and became aggressive. He resolutely changed the subject. "Before you go I want to ask you—do you, as a chemist, deny the immortality of the soul?"

"Chemistry does not concern itself with the soul."

"Do you, as a man, deny the immortality of the soul?"

"I neither deny nor affirm. I have never concerned myself with the question."Clarke was a little daunted. "You leave the most vital question in all this world uninvestigated!"

"Yes, because I was long ago convinced that the problem of death, like the origin of life, is insoluble, and why waste time on the insoluble? To pore upon the constitution of matter is a species of mediÆvalism. I am concerned with what bacteria do—not what they are."

"I deny that the question of immortality is insoluble!" replied Clarke, his eyes glowing with the fire of his faith. "It is because you scientists ignore the phenomena of spiritism that you remain ignorant of the messages which come from the other side."

"What other side?"

"The realm of those you call 'the dead.'" He caught up a book. "There is the word of a German scientist, a hundred times more eminent than you, and here are the conclusions of two great Englishmen, members of the Royal Academy, who have investigated and have been convinced of the return of the dead."

"I know those men," replied Serviss, coldly. "The common opinion is that they ceased to be scientists when they wrote these volumes. All were past their prime and bereaved, and one was nearly blind. Their true balance of judgment was lost before they set to work on what you call their investigations. The German was considered insane on the 'Fourth Dimension.' But what has this girl to do with your 'realm of the dead' or my study of cancerous tissue? She belongs to the realm of music and flowers. I beg you to remember that. You have no right to throw over her the shadow of your religious perplexities any more than I would have the right to lay before her my knowledge of parasitic growths. Youth, and especially young womanhood, has its rights, and one of them is to be blithe. You admit that you are losing faith; why destroy hers? Your doubts and despairs should not touch her. But they have. She is troubled and sad by reason of your attitude towards life, and especially by your insistence upon the presence of death in the world."

This was not precisely what Serviss had started out to say, but as he went on a sense of being misled, a suspicion that he was playing into the hands of the enemy, kept him from putting into words the strong conviction which had seized him.

The preacher put his interlocked fingers behind his head, and, looking at his visitor beneath lowered, contemptuous lids, replied: "My dear sir, you don't know a thing of what you're talking about."

The note of patronization, the tone of superior wisdom, stung the scientist. He felt in the clergyman's reply not merely opposition, but insult. His very pose was an affront.

"I don't know your motives, that is perfectly true, but I can infer them. It is due me to say that I am not in the habit of mixing in where I am not wanted; but as Mr. and Mrs. Lambert have both asked my advice, I shall give it. The girl is morbid and unhappy here, and I shall tell them to send her away for a time. She has musical talent. I shall advise them to allow her to go East to study."

The preacher's smile deepened into a sneer. "I think I understand your motives, and I shall oppose her going. What is there to restrain a man who recognizes neither spirit nor God?"

Serviss was at first astounded, then hot at the grossness of this insinuation, and his strong, brown hands clinched in the instinct to punish—to retaliate—but his anger cooled to the level of words, and he said: "This interview has more than convinced me of the justice of Lambert's distrust of you. I shall see him again and repeat the warning I have already given." And with these words he turned and went out.

It was with a sense of astonishment and relief that he re-entered the daylight, for the sunset glow was not yet out of the sky. A moment before the world had seemed enveloped in midnight darkness, and lo! here now were the splendid peaks, the singing river, all aglow with golden light. The encounter of the moment before receded swiftly, became incredible, but the preacher remained squat in his den like a vampire in his cave.

As he went slowly up the street he acknowledged a feeling of growing weight, of uncertainty. Having given his word in such wise, he had become the defender, the protector of one of whom he knew nothing that was reassuring. His youth seemed to have suddenly taken on care. His vacation had ended in a cloud of distrust. From the detachment of the scientist he had descended to the level of a moralist and meddler, and, most significant of all, a meddler in the affairs of a young and attractive girl.

VIIIToC

DR. BRITT EXPLAINS

Serviss had just written and sealed a letter to his sister, wherein he said, "I shall remain a few days longer here in the mountains—they interest me greatly," when a knock on the door announced the bell-boy bearing a card.

"Dr. Britt!" exclaimed Serviss, with pleasure. "Bring him up, please," and to himself added, "Now we will learn something definite about this amazing group of people."

The manner in which Britt entered the room proclaimed a distinctive character. He edged himself through the door, not stealthily, but carelessly, casually. He, too, was tall, with a wide, dark beard curling over very pink and rather plump cheeks, and in his bright black eyes a sardonic sheen played as he loosely shook his host's hand. His expression was that of a man perpetually amused, as if anticipating a joke or recollecting a mockery. His voice was as languid as his limbs, but his words were precise and to their mark.

Serviss greeted him heartily. "I am glad to meet you, Dr. Britt; take a seat. I have heard of you through Miss Lambert.""I saw you on the street," replied Britt, without change of expression, "so I looked over the register to find out who you were. I'm mighty glad to meet up with you. I know you very well by reputation, and Weissmann is an old acquaintance of our family's. What are you doing out here? Visiting the Lamberts?"

For some reason this directness disturbed Serviss a little. "No—oh no! I just drifted in over the divide from the desert, and met Miss Lambert by accident, quite by accident. I dropped into Colorow to rest and rinse the desert dust away, before returning East. Turn about is fair play—what are you doing here?"

Britt struck his left breast with his thumb. "Same old story—busted lung. Whenever you strike a suspicious character out here he's either a 'one-lunger' or a 'remittance man.'"

"That's what makes your country worth while."

"I don't know about that, but you'll find a good many of us waiting. When you fellows develop an anti-toxin for the consumption 'bug,' we're all going back to God's country."

"We're hot on its trail," replied Serviss, jocularly.

"I know you are. I 'read after you,' as they say out here. In fact, I've got a little 'farm,' and take a shy at breeding the beasts myself. I'd like you to come in and give me a hint or two."

"With pleasure," Serviss heartily responded. "So you know Weissmann?"

"I used to. My father was an attachÉ of the embassy at Berlin at one time, and was a factor in getting old 'Hair and Goggles' to come over; he was a conceited ass at that time, with more wool than brains, the governor always said; but the governor wanted to do something for the college."

Serviss studied the card. "Do I know your father?—is he still in public life?"

"He is not." Britt's glance veered. "The governor, I'm sorry to say, has a weakness for toddy, and I've retired him. He boards in White Plains with Patsy Cline summers, and relapses winters."

Serviss changed the subject. "By-the-way, I want to ask you about this man Clarke. What kind of a chap is he?"

Britt's answer was languid but adequate. "Three parts fakir and the rest fanatic."

"I was afraid so—and the Lamberts, what of them?"

"Mrs. Lambert is a dear old ninny. Viola is a mighty bright girl suffering from a well-developed case of hysteria and auto-hypnosis."

"What do you mean?" asked Serviss, sharply.

Britt checked himself. "I ought not to speak of it, I suppose, but, as you are a stranger and can keep a professional secret, I will explain. The mother is a spiritualist—has been for years—and, being on the lookout for it, naturally discovered what she calls 'mediumship' in Viola when a child. By carefully nursing the delusion in herself and in her subject, she has been able to develop a rare 'up-rush of the subliminal,' as Myers would say. When I came here to take Dr. Randall's practice, I found among his papers elaborate notes on the girl's development."

"You amaze me!" exclaimed Serviss. "She seems so normal and so charming."

"In reality she's the most extraordinary puzzle I have ever undertaken to solve. It seems, according to Randall, that this power came upon her soon after the death of her little brother—a couple of years younger than herself. I'll let you see these notes if you like. They're very curious; in fact, I brought the book along—I wanted your opinion of them and your advice as to the girl's treatment."

Serviss leaned forward in growing interest. "By all means let me see the notes. You begin to throw light on something that puzzled me."

Britt drew a small brown book from his pocket and said: "Your first thought will be to relate this business to hysteria, and one of Randall's first entries is a reflection along these lines: 'There is much inconclusive literature on the shelves of medical libraries on the subject of hysteria, and many diverse ailments are thrown into that box of explanations.'" Britt looked up. "He's right there, but he goes on to slate the medical profession thus: 'The mind of a child, like any other expanding, growing thing, tends to depart from the norm—loves apparently to surprise its progenitors. Holding in its grasp latent tendencies of all ages, of all the race, it may at any time astound by its sudden expansion in unexpected directions, as well as by its inexplicable failure to follow ordained grooves.'" Here Britt paused again. "You can see the old chap was hard hit. He now gets evolutionary. 'We are all goats, satyrs, and serpents potentially—even from the neurologist's point of view our minds are infinitely complex.'"

Serviss said, "All this is wise, but is it pertinent?"

"He's coming at it. 'Now, what we men of medicine call hysteria seems to be a violent and, in a sense, unaccountable departure from the norm, induced by the removal of some check—by some deep change in the nervous constitution. Thus a girl suddenly refuses to eat, has visions, shouts, and sings uncontrollably, perhaps speaks in an unknown tongue—she is said to be hysterical. A mother, hearing of the death of her child, begins to laugh, passes at length into a cataleptic state, during which a child's voice sounds from her throat; this, too, is hysteria. A man of forty-five becomes melancholy, professes to hear music inaudible to others, develops automatic writing, and trances in which he is able to hear distant voices, and to read sealed letters; this, too, is hysteria. In reality, nothing is explained.'"

"What of it?" interrupted Serviss. "Let's have the application."

"He makes his point in the next paragraph: 'In conformity with this habit, when called in by Mrs. Lambert to study her daughter, who had passed suddenly into deep sleep and was speaking with the voice of her grandfather, I, with owlish gravity, pronounced her attack a case of hysteria. "Take her on a little trip," said I. "Keep her well nourished and out-of-doors, and she will outgrow it."'"

"Very good advice."

"So it was, but mark the sequel: 'She did not outgrow it.' He puts this in italics. 'The power within her gained in mastery, and, what is most singular and baffling to me, she continues to be a hearty, healthy child in all other ways, and yet at times she seems the calm centre of a whirlwind of invisible forces. Chairs, books, thimbles, even the piano, move to and fro without visible pushing. Electric snapping is heard in the carpet under her little feet, and loud knocking comes upon the walls—'"

"Ah!" exclaimed Serviss, and recalled the knocking at his first visit, while the girl was at the piano.

"Here he drops into italics again. 'One by one all the familiar manifestations of the spiritualistic medium are being reproduced by this pretty maiden here in this mountain home.'"

"Good Lord, what a pity!" exclaimed Serviss.

Britt read on: "'The mother, aggrieved and alarmed by the rude way in which the girl is buffeted, has been put to her paces to conceal the topsy-turvy doings of her household. Stones are hurled through the windows, cabinets are opened by invisible and silent locksmiths, and I have seen these things and can offer no explanation.'" Britt closed the book. "Right here the old doctor lost his nerve, up to this time he was a fairly acute observer. His next entry is evidently some weeks or, possibly, months later. He says: 'Slowly we have learned to understand the phenomena, but we cannot control them, and the child is still cruelly embarrassed by intrusive tappings and cracklings as she visits her friends or as she sits in her seat in school. She has become afraid to sleep alone, and calls piteously for a light whenever the noises begin.'"

"The poor child—"

"You may well say that," replied Britt. "She has told me that her time of greatest trial comes just after the family have had their evening meal, and while she is seated at her book; but Randall grows eloquent in his description of what took place: 'Almost every night at seven o'clock the obscure powers begin their uncanny and invisible riot, ending by seizing upon the child as if to destroy her, compelling her in the end to sleep. Then her voice, her limbs, seem at the disposal of some invisible intelligence.' You see, the old man is weakening. He says no more of hysteria, and nothing about taking the girl away."

"Do you mean to tell me he joined in fostering this delusion?"

"Mark his change of tone. He goes on: 'The mother, convinced by her reading, as well as by messages in writing, believes that the spirits of her dead are trying to communicate with her, and so sits night after night terrified yet hoping, waiting for further instructions from the imponderable ones.'" Britt turned a few pages rapidly. "Listen to this. Here is the key to the old man's change of heart: 'To-night the child began to speak to me in the voice of a man. Hoarse words rose from deep in her throat, a voice and words impossible to her in her normal condition. The voice purported to be my father's. It is all very singular. I do not understand how she could know the things this voice uttered to me.' You see," said Britt, "he has ceased to be the medical adviser." He turned a number of pages slowly. "Well, the girl passed rapidly through these various phases, according to Randall. She wrote messages with her left hand, wherein her grandfather McLeod detailed the method of treating her, and Randall was so far gone that he acquiesced. From her eleventh to her fifteenth year she lived under this 'control.' The manifestations increased in power and definiteness. The 'controls' at last were three—her grandfather, her brother, and her own father. At sixteen the most violent of the manifestations ceased, and the girl went away to school. At this point Joe Lambert enters—he married the mother."

"How did he take these doings?"

"He seems to have been a silent and reluctant witness; the doctor only mentions him incidentally. There are one or two pitiful letters from the girl written while at school, detailing several embarrassing returns of the 'spirits,' but, on the whole, she was happy. According to the record, her vacations must have been a torment, for 'Waltie,' that's no Polter-geist, seemed determined to make up for lost time. He came every night, making life a hell for his sister. She could go nowhere, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the mother kept her dreadful secret."Serviss, with darkened brow, writhed uneasily in his chair. "I have heard of these things before now, but this is a new view of a medium's development. I don't understand the mother's attitude."

"Randall notes that the mother was resigned and content as soon as she was convinced of the return of her dead father and husband and son, and at present will not think of giving up her fancied communion, especially as the 'guides' constantly assure her that 'they' will protect the girl. But observe the senility of this note in Randall's diary: 'Martha comes regularly to me now, and I am happy in a renewed sense of her companionship. Indeed, I fancy at times that I can see her. She showed me her hands last night; I could see them plainly against the window. I had quite a controversy with Lambert after the sitting. "It's all bad business," he said. "I am scared when I think of what's going to become of Viola. Here she is growing to be a big girl, and a pretty girl, and she ought to be out in company—she ought to be singing and dancing like other girls. She ought to marry like other girls and be happy, and she can't be so long as these things are going on. It isn't right."'"

"No more was it," said Serviss. "It was villainous."

"Randall was too far gone to even agree. 'But it hasn't hurt her,' I replied; 'and, indeed, this marvellous fact resigns me to the practice. I can't endure now the thought of being cut off from Martha and Paul, our precious boy. It would be like shutting the door in their faces. Besides, they are in control; we could not stop their use of the girl if we were to try. As for me, it is now my life. I am old. My friends, my dear ones, are all on that side. I have only a few more days to live, and then—' Right here the old man stopped. He lived a month or two after that, but he made no more notes, and when I came on the scene Clarke was in control of the situation. I had no acquaintance with the family and no personal knowledge of the case till Lambert called one day and told me of the sittings going on in the little cottage. He had a notion that I might be able to cure the girl."

Serviss had listened to Britt with growing pain and indignation—pain at thought of Viola's undoing, indignation that the mother and her physician could so complacently join in the dark proceedings. "Of course, you took hold of the case."

"I tried to, but Mrs. Lambert and Clarke would not admit that the girl was in need of my care. They invited me to join the circle as a spectator, which I did. I am still the onlooker—merely."

"You don't mean to say they are still experimenting with her?"

"You may call it that. They sit regularly two or three nights each week. Clarke is preparing to renounce his pulpit and startle the world by a book on 'spiritism,' as he calls his faith. The girl is his source of thunder."

Serviss sank back into his chair and darkly pondered. "That explains a number of very strange words and actions on the girl's part. What is her attitude? She seemed to me extremely discontented and unhappy."

"She is unhappy. She understands her situation and has moments of rebellion. She knows that she is cut off from her rightful share in the world of young people, and feels accursed."

"I can understand that, and several things she said to me corroborate your analysis of her feeling. But tell me—you have attended these sittings—what takes place—what does the girl profess to do?"

"I don't know. I can't determine Clarke's share in the hocus-pocus. It all takes place in the dark."

"It always does. It belongs there."

"Many of the good old 'stunts' of the professional medium are reproduced. Lights dance about, guitars are played, chairs nose about your knees, hands are laid on your cheek, and so on."

"You don't think she is wilfully tricking?" Serviss asked this with manifest anxiety.

"There's every inducement—darkness, deeply anxious friends. It would not be strange if she did 'help on' now and then."

"What a deplorable thing!"

"And yet I'm not so sure that she wilfully deceives, though I have detected her in fraud. Probably the whole thing began in some childish disorder which threw her system out of balance. There are hundreds of such cases in medical literature. She was 'possessed,' as of old, with a sort of devilish 'secondary personality.' She probably wrote treatises left-handed and upside-down. They often begin that way. The mother, lately bereaved, was convinced of her daughter's occult powers. She nursed the delusion, formed a circle, sat in the darkness, petting the girl when things happened, mourning when the walls were silent—and there you are! 'Sludge the Medium' all over again, in a small way. Probably the girl didn't intend to deceive anybody at first, but she was tolled along from one fakery to another, till at last she found herself powerless in the grasp of her self-induced coma. She is anxious to escape her slavery; she revolts, and is most unhappy, but sees no way out. That's my present understanding of the case. Now, what is your advice? What can I do? I am deeply interested in the girl, but I have no authority to act."

"You shock and disgust me," said Serviss, profoundly moved. "The girl seems too fine for such chicanery. Who is this man Clarke?"

"He was a sensational preacher in Brooklyn a few years ago, but a hemorrhage in the pulpit cut short his career in the East. He came out here and got better, but his wife, who had a weak heart, couldn't stand the altitude. She died—a sacrifice to her husband. He's the kind of a man who demands sacrifice. After his wife's death, he fairly lived at the Lambert cottage, and is now in full control. The girl's will is so weakened that she is but a puppet in the grasp of his powerful personality."

Serviss was now absorbed in reconstructing his conception of Viola. Her situation appealed to him with the greatest poignancy, but his ability to help her seemed gone. Fair as she looked, she was to be avoided, as one tainted with leprosy. His impression that first afternoon had been true—she was beleaguered, if not lost.

Britt was saying: "If the girl were under age I'd appeal to the health authorities of the state—I really would, much as I like Mrs. Lambert—but she is of age, and, what is more to the point, Clarke has won her love and confidence, and what can you do? He fills her horizon, and the mother favors him. He talks to her of her daughter's 'mission to the world,' and such-like vapor, and has the girl herself half convinced that her cataleptic states are of divine origin. I confess I haven't felt free to make any real tests—you can't treat her like a professional, you know—but she seems to have induced by long practice a genuine coma, and until some clamp is applied I can't say whether she or Clarke is the chief offender. Now what would you do?"

Serviss burned with the heat of his anger. "Don't reveal to me any more of this wretched business. I can't advise. If you, her physician, and Lambert, her step-father, can't put a stop to it, what can I, a passing stranger, do? I don't want to know anything more about it. Why, man, it's diabolical! To warp and imprison a girl like that! To think of that bewitching creature as a common trickster—appalls me. And to think that good people, millions of them, believe in such mummery! It is incredible!"

"You'd be surprised at the number of somewhat similar cases we find among our patients. Since coming here I've gone in for a little library of books on the subject. Every physician during his practice comes upon one or more of these abnormal cases which, as Randall says, we label, for convenience, 'hysteria,' and I'm free to say that I don't think we're at the bottom of the matter. Let's be just to this girl. There are points in her favor."

Serviss protested. "Not another word. It's too painful."

Britt persisted. "I was merely going to say that I think there is some basis for all this humbuggery. These mediums don't start from nothing. They nearly all begin with some abnormality. Some submerged power rises to the surface of their minds like a sea-serpent, and that distinguishes them as seers. Curious friends crowd around, then the lying begins. It's going to be worth while to take the subject up, by-and-by. I'd do it myself if I could live in New York City." He rose. "Well, I don't blame you for not going into this case—I wish I were clear of it myself—but I was hoping you'd had some experience that would help me." Thereupon the conversation shifted to other grounds.

After Britt went out Serviss sat in brooding uneasiness over his visitor's sad revelations. He had known Viola Lambert but three days, and yet these revelations concerning her affected him most painfully, quite vitally. His pleasure in her and in the mother and their pretty home was utterly gone, and the breaking-off of this acquaintance left an ache in his heart.

Of course he put all this on very general grounds. "I hate to lose faith in any one. It is a shock to know that I can be so wholly deceived by appearance. Clarke is really the one to blame in the deception. I can't believe the girl wilfully deceives, and yet Britt was explicit, and he seems to be a keen, dispassionate observer."

Thereupon he began to pack in order to take the early morning train for the East. He decided not to see her again, and posted a polite note saying he had been obliged to return to New York, and that he regretted his inability to call.

As he stood on the rear platform of his train next day, looking back up the caÑon towards the shining crest of Colorow, he had a craven sense of having deserted a helpless young girl in the hour of her greatest trial.

IXToC

ANTHONY CLARKE, EVANGEL

Mr. Britt was right. Mrs. Lambert was very fond of Clarke—had, indeed, quite taken him into her heart. He was at once son and spiritual adviser, and his wishes had the force of commands. His bereavement could not have anguished her much more keenly had Adele been her own daughter, and this affliction still lay like a mist between them, preventing even a foreboding of his impending confession of desire. Her remembrance of the beauty and high character of his wife made Viola seem doubly the child; and so when, from time to time, some busybody hinted at the minister's marked intimacy with her daughter, she put the covert insinuation away with a frank word—"You mustn't even think such a thing."

Viola, too, from the very beginning of their acquaintance, had admired the young minister quite as deeply as Serviss imagined, and had humbled herself before Adele as to a very wonderful lady of the mysterious outer world, whose deportment, dress, and speech had been sources of enlightenment; and when she passed away, the land of the shadow became just that much richer, more complete in its dominion over her. Almost at once Adele spoke through the vale, saying, "I am here to help and guide."

Thus all powers of earth and heaven had combined to make Clarke the ruler of Viola Lambert's little world. He stood between her and young Clinton Ward and all other suitors—he absorbed her thought. She admired his gifts, and trembled beneath the power of his dark eyes, his magnetic hands, and especially responded to the music of his deep voice, which was very enthralling when it took on the pleading melody of the lover. At times he filled her with such passion of vague unrest that life became a torment, for she was of the age when the world is for the lover's conquest, and the cadence of love's song means most and is least understood; and yet at times she felt a fear of him which chilled her. She was struggling, too, with growing ambitions, and with an expanding knowledge of the world which was beginning to make her critical—the wonder of the child was giving place to the insight of the woman. The wish to shake off her invisible tormentors and be like other girls was in reality a demand for the right to be loved and valued for her own natural self, entirely free from the touch of spectral hands.

She was disappointed that Clarke did not understand and sympathize with this wish, but that he desired her in marriage had never once entered her mind. He was a minister, and she reverenced his office, and, besides, she considered herself but a girl, too ignorant and too trivial to be the wife of one so high in holy service.With the coming of the young professor a new force seemed entered upon the saner side of her life. She recognized in him a master of the great outer world—the Eastern world, the world of the unafraid—and her determination to at least subordinate her "controls" had expanded swiftly to a most dangerous height during the few hours of her companionship with him. She felt that he would sympathize with her—that he would help her. The clear positiveness of his speech, his health, his humor, grew upon her each moment, and she resolved to confide in him when next they met.

Part of this upspringing revolt, this antagonism, Clarke divined, and the determination to arrest her purpose, the desire to possess her entirely and at once, excluded every other wish or plan, and to feel was to act with Anthony Clarke, for he was born to emotional experience as the sparks fly upward. He had ever been a creature of unreason, morbidly conscious of self—and naturally, for in him struggled the blood of three races. His father was Scotch, and his mother—Spanish on the spindle side and Irish by way of a most mercurial father—remained an unsolved problem all her days, even to her husband. Her laughter was as illogical as her tears. Her household could never tell what the next hour would bring forth, so ready were her sympathies, so instant her despairs. She lived all her life at the heights or the depths, with never a day of serene, womanly, reasonable action, and when she died her passing was of the same emotional stress. She clung to earth like one whose body was about to drop into soundless deeps.

Her son had inherited all her fervency, her inconstancy of purpose, as well as her tendency to collapse under pressure. Physically he had always been of slender figure, with weak lungs, and these weaknesses he had used to free himself from work, from responsibility.

He was not a hypocrite—in that Britt was mistaken. He was by nature deeply religious. His soul aspired, at times, to high things. He was sympathetic to actual pain, and had always been morbidly in awe of death. The sight of any poor, lost, and suffering man threw him into instant, profound, and melancholy pity. A dead beetle in the road, a fly caught in a spider's web, a young robin water-soaked and bedraggled, appalled him, even as a boy, and he pondered them with sad and questioning eyes long after his young companions had forgotten them. Where had the light of their eyes fled? he asked himself. He found no sport in killing any creature, and more than once he used all his slender force to defend a cat from stoning; and yet he was known to have joined the worst youths of his native town in secret drinking-bouts, thereby acquiring the reputation of a liar and sneak, as well as that of licentiate. At seventeen, just when the appetite for liquor seemed beyond his control, a great "revivalist" won his soul, as the saying went, and at twenty-three he assumed his first pastorate.

Success as a pulpit orator was assured by the charm of his voice, the magnetism of his manner. His head was singularly handsome, and often when he spoke his face was irradiated like that of a seraph, and the women of all his congregations adored him from the first glance, embarrassing him with their ardent praises. That he had remained faithful to his wife in spite of this adoration was evidence of her great beauty of character. She was, indeed, his safeguard and his hourly monitor while she lived.

For him she had sacrificed all her friends in the East. She came to the mountains without a murmur, she bore with him, cheered him, upheld him in a hundred ways—and when she died his world went black as midnight. It was as if in the midst of a monster, interminable cavern his one starlike light had gone out in his hand. For days he beat his head against the wall, crying defiant curses against his God; but in the end he sank into voiceless despair. Then it was, as he lay prone and passive, that he began to hear mysterious whisperings and tappings on the walls of his cavern of despond. He rose and listened. He groped his way towards the dim light. He returned to the world of men. His faith in the Scriptures was weakened; but he soon discovered a wondrous change of heart towards those who claimed to be intermediaries between the worlds of matter and of spirit. He turned his attention to the study of the physical evidences of life after death.

Up to that moment he had given but little credence to Mrs. Lambert's half-hearted confidences concerning her own change of faith, and, as Viola had been away at school much of the time, he had forgotten that she was concerned in the mother's confession.

The disclosure of her powers, as he told Dr. Britt—after they were both involved in the curious case—came violently, without warning, a few days after Adele's death. "I was sitting with Mrs. Lambert in sad conversation, seeking her aid and comfort. Viola occupied a low chair beside the shaded lamp, a book upon her knee. She was listening to me. I had just finished saying, in deeply passionate tones, 'I would give all my hope of life for one whisper from the lips of my Adele,' when the room began to darken. At first I thought the effect lay in my own brain, but a moment later I perceived that the light had actually begun to fail. We all watched it in silence for a moment, then Mrs. Lambert remarked, 'Viola, Mary forgot to fill the lamp.'

"Even as she spoke a cool wind blew over my head and lay along my hands. The flame leaped into the air, the room went black, save where a pale glow coming from the street lay upon the floor. A faint rustling arose, a hand touched my cheek, soft lips brushed my ear, and a whisper that stopped the beating of my heart began. A vague, inarticulate murmur, at first; but at last I plainly heard my spirit-wife speaking in gentle reproof—'Tony, Tony, I am always with you.'

"The whisper ceased. The hand was taken away. A deep sigh came to my ear. My Adele was gone! The moment of ecstasy was over. I sat stunned, inert, my brain whirling with the far-reaching import of this experience. Before I could drag myself to my feet Mrs. Lambert, practical and undisturbed, threw open the door and let the light of the street in. Only then, as I looked on Viola, lying in trance with white, set face, did I first connect her in any way with my sweet communion with Adele.

"Then, like a flash of joyous light irradiating my soul, came the conviction that she was the medium through whom my Adele had spoken—that she had opened the gates of silence for me.

"I was no longer body—I was a brain suspended in some invisible sea of force. Here was the reality of religion. Here was the answer to the anguished cry of humanity—an answer to my prayers which the Hebrew Scriptures could not give. There was a life beyond the grave. The spirit did persist after the decay of the body. And here in this little room, when my despair was deepest, the proof had come, blinding me with its beauty.

"Then I said: 'Viola, you have given me the most wonderful moment of all my life. You brought my Adele and put her hand in mine. Through you I heard her voice again. God has chosen you for a great work; I feel it. You should not repel these powers; your gift may mean the most exquisite comfort to thousands—nay, millions—of bereaved souls.'

"I was amazed at the vehement unreason of her reply. 'I don't want it!' she cried. 'I hate it! I won't sit again!' Then I tried to persuade her of her great mission, to no result. The following night I came, and we pleaded with her to act again with us, but she still passionately refused. 'Why don't they come to you or to mother,' she complained, 'instead of to me?' To this I said: 'There is no answer. They have made you their instrument, and it is your duty to do their will.'

"That night the little parlor became a battle-field. Mrs. Lambert had invoked the aid of Donald McLeod, her father, the girl's 'control.' Viola resisted almost to the death. It seemed as if a strong hand clutched her throat, commanding obedience. I feared she would be torn to pieces, and at last I protested. 'She is suffering too much; let us give over the sitting.' But Mrs. Lambert said, quietly: 'It is her own fault. She is being punished for her obstinacy. Father is disciplining her—he will not harm her.' In the end the power conquered, and the girl lay back in slumber so deep, so dead, that her breath seemed stilled forever—her hands icily inert, her face as white as marble."

"Why didn't you interfere?" asked Britt, sternly.

"How could I, when the mother and the girl's 'controls' were minded otherwise? Besides, I began to believe in the girl's mission—I began to understand the enormous value of her work. My God, Dr. Britt, had I that girl's gift I would engross the world. I would write such words across the tomb that death would seem as sweet as baby slumber. I would make the grave a gateway to the light. I would eliminate sorrow from the earth. The Bible no longer satisfies me. I want something more than cold, black letters on a printed page. I want to know! I want to thrill the world with a new message; and here, now, at my hand, is a medium. I can never have this power—perhaps it is only given to babes and to sucklings, but I can spread the light. You, Dr. Britt, shall help me. Let us study this wonderful gift. Let us concentrate our energies upon this supreme problem. I will note all that comes to us, and I will write a burning book—a revelation that shall go round the globe, guiding and gladdening every human soul. Think of it! There is no mightier mission on earth. This girl can be, and must be, made a savior, a hope-bringer, to thousands of despairing souls!"

To this fervid appeal Britt remained impassive and coldly critical—till, chilled and repelled, Clarke had withdrawn his confidence. The two still met occasionally in Mrs. Lambert's home, but their antagonism had deepened to actual hatred. Britt, impotent to help, had long since ceased to protest, even to the girl herself; for he had learned that every revolt on her part brought keener pain and deeper humiliation in its train. He entered upon a study of the subject, and thus far had found little to encourage the hope of the girl's redemption from her maladies.

Clarke, too, had surrounded himself with every available book which bore upon these baffling phases of human experiences, and had put himself in touch with every society organized for the investigation of occult phenomena—and in his dark little den brooded day and night over the dimly apprehended laws of the unseen universe. He left his studies only to be with Viola, who had become as necessary to him as his daily food—as indispensable as air. She was at once his hope and his very present help. How to keep her, how to mould her to his will, how to use her to his great purpose of ridding the world of the fear of death—these became his hourly care, his only interest.

To these ends he strove to enthrall her by his singing, by his oratory, and by his love of poetry, knowing well that to drum constantly upon the harsh string of her "mission" would revolt her; and she, thus beset, thus beleaguered, gave over her rebellion, resigning herself to her guides till this ruddy and powerful young man of science came into her world to fill her with new determination to escape from her mental slavery.

Clarke loved this girl, not as he had loved Adele, of course, but quite as humanly. Her mediumship, so vital to the world, so sacred in his eyes, had but added to her allurement. "All that I am, and all I hope to be, is bound up in the possession of that sweet, wonderful child," he said, in acknowledgment of his discovery. In a very subtle way he now apprehended a change in the girl, and, realizing how utterly his aims, his daily happiness, his future depended upon her, he rose from his seat resolved not merely to advise against her going away, but to claim her as his own—his wife.

"My wife!" At this deeply significant word Adele's pleading face rose vividly before him. Writhing with shame before her reproachful glance, he cried out: "But I cannot live alone! And then consider—I shall be able to meet you each day, perhaps each hour, and as I myself develop in grace of soul I may come to you without any medium. I am not disloyal to you, Adele. I love this girl, I confess that; but not as I loved you. You were my true wife, the only spouse I can ever have—you filled my soul. My love for this girl is that of a father—a teacher. I need her for—Oh, my Adele, I will confess, before you came back to me through this child I was weary of the earth, ready to violently end my anguish. Viola put your hand again in mine—she gave me to hear your voice. I cannot bear to lose those priceless moments, and yet I must do so if she goes from me. Am I not justified in desiring her presence? Come to me; tell me, to-night, what you would have me do. Be merciful, my angel spouse. Remember my empty, desolate heart. Remember the greatness of the work I have set myself to do. Oh, my sweet spirit, if you could only put an arm about my neck now, without any other interposing soul! Come to me, whisper to me—now! Let me know your presence here as I sit alone and despairing—"

He ceased to pray, and bowed his head upon his desk and waited in an agony of hope—waited while the darkness deepened and the splendid eternal song of the river proclaimed the futility and folly of man. A cricket sang with heart-piercing cheer, as if to say, "I die to-morrow, but I never despair." But no silken rustle, no whispering voice came to still the agony welling in bitter sighs from the lips of the tempted man.

XToC

CLARKE'S WOOING

Mrs. Lambert was face to face with a decision of almost equal moment—was, indeed, in the midst of formulating the question which perplexed her, in order that she might lay it before her invisible guides for their consideration. She had just written upon a slate these words: "Shall I take Viola and go East, or shall I send her on alone?" when Clarke's foot was heard outside her door. Hastily hiding the slate, she rose to meet her visitor.

He was very pale, and something in his glance made her aware that his call was of no ordinary intent.

"Where is Viola?" he asked, abruptly.

"She has gone to the street with a friend. She will return soon."

"I am glad you are alone; I want to talk with you. I don't like the condition of mind Viola is in to-day. The coming of this Eastern professor seems to have stirred her to another fit of restless desire to go away. I can't think of this, Julia; she is too precious to me to lose. She has become a part of my very heart's blood, and I am afraid to let her go out of my sight. She is young and very impressionable. If she goes away into the city we may both lose her forever. The time has come to tell you that I love her—not precisely as I loved Adele, but deeply, passionately. I want her as my wife. I ask your consent to tell her so—to-night. Will you give that permission?"

Mrs. Lambert gazed up at him with such fixity of surprise that the rush of his forthright appeal weakened towards its end. She was overwhelmed by the intensity of passion in his voice, as well as by surprise that he, so soon after his bitter loss, could turn to another—to her daughter, a child. And, at last, she whispered, "What will they say, Anthony?"

This question he had anticipated, and his reply was ready. "They will advise it, I am sure. For does it not fit to their purpose? Does not my great book depend on Viola's daily co-operation? I have no fear of their answer; I fear what she will say." He began to pace up and down the room. "What, from their point of view, does her musical education signify? Think of it! She holds the key to the gates of death. On her the hopes of millions hang. She is the most wonderful organism in this world—so normal in all other ways, so trustworthy. She will convince all who come into her presence; and then, have not her 'controls' chosen me to publish their discoveries to the world? It is ordained that we work together in this way. She must not go to New York, that vast caldron which destroys all that is spiritual. She should go only when closely guarded by those who love her and understand her exquisite nature, her gifts. Some day I will take her there. Alone she will be prevented from her grand mission, her message lost, her faith destroyed. Can't you see she must not go?"

"I have done my best to keep her."

"I know you have," he answered, quickly; "and now you must give me authority over her—the authority of a husband. I am willing to put the whole matter to the test this night. She knows that I love her, and I think she honors and respects me—perhaps she may already love me, unworthy as I am."

The mother began now to tremble. "I don't know, Anthony; she thought—we all understood—that you—"

"I know what you mean," he irritably exclaimed. "Why will you persist in misreading me? I am not disloyal to Adele. Can't you see that my devotion for her remains, and that my regard for Viola is no treason to the dead? Adele will understand how vital, how necessary, Viola is to me, for does she not know that I could not even communicate with her if Viola went away? I do not love Viola as a boy loves, but as a man who understands himself and her—as one who understands her duties. It is a different love, but it is just as true, and it is high and holy. Without her I would have gone mad. She saved me from despair. Her union with me will make her an evangel to the earth-bound millions."

Flattered as well as awed by this disclosure of her daughter's power, the mother consented to his demand. Marriage with him would safe-harbor Viola, would establish her in life, and would also carry forward the work which she, too, considered of greater importance than any other concern of her life.

"I don't know her mind, Anthony," she said, after a silence. "She worries and puzzles me lately by her opposition to all our plans; but I don't think she is attached to any of the young men she knows. Still, she is not one to speak of such things. And if she consents—"

"When she comes, leave her to me," answered he, with returning confidence. Deep in the man's egotistic soul lay the thought, "I know why this girl is restless and uneasy—I know why she seeks afar off; it is because she thinks me indissolubly bound to Adele. When she finds that I love her, that I want her for my wife, she will come—her vague rebellions will cease. Her longings will close round me—"

When the door opened and Viola stepped into the room, so tall, so vivid, so tingling with life, the very force of his desire rendered Clarke outwardly humble, drove him to a feigning of sadness and to the voicing of desolate weakness. After the mother left them alone he began speaking in a low voice with deep-dropping cadences.

"Viola, I have something important to say to you. I am much disturbed over your renewed determination to go away. In the face of the great work which is yours to do I do not understand how you can think of dropping it in mid-air, so to speak, to go away on an errand which is essentially selfish—as well as most unwise and full of danger. I don't understand this renewal of restlessness on your part."

The girl's face was clouded, for she had just learned of Serviss's departure and was deeply hurt. She drew the pin from her hat and silently laid it on the table, and in this gesture was something of the resolution of the warrior who divests himself of his cumbering plumed helmet. "It's very simple," she curtly answered. "I want to get away from here for a while. I can't endure my life here any longer."

"Why not? Why are you so unhappy?" he asked, with an accent of stern reproof. "It is a beautiful land—you are among your own people, you have your music, your work, and you are young. You ought to be happy."

"That's just it," she interrupted, quite fiercely. "It is because I am young that I want to do something. It seems to me to-day as if I were losing the best years of my life here in this little town, and I want to get away. I must get away!"

"Does your work with me seem of no value?" His glowing eyes sought hers. He approached her. "Do I weary you? Am I an irritation?"

Her face softened. "No, you have helped me very much. I couldn't have endured this life without you and my music; but this other life—these sittings—I can't go on with them."

"Don't you feel that you must? Don't you feel their enormous importance?"

"No, I don't! I begin to doubt myself—everybody. What have they done for you, for anybody, that I should sacrifice nay whole life to them and their wishes?"

"They brought me healing; they made Dr. Randall happy in his last years; they are a daily solace to your mother; they will comfort millions through our agency." He bent towards her. "Viola, my girl, God has designed for you and me a closer union than even this. You say I have comforted you, that I have made life happier for you. I have come to-night to tell you that I love you, and that I want you to be my wife."

The girl recoiled from the touch of his hand, uttering a low cry of surprise, of question.

He went on: "Yes, I have grown to care for you beyond any other human being. You are my staff, my stay. God sent you to my spiritual healing. I should have gone mad but for you." He bent upon her a look of passion and command. "You must not think of going away. You belong to me." Her face warned him that his appeal was being misinterpreted, and he added, quickly: "I know this comes to you abruptly, and yet you must have felt my love, you must have read my heart."

"Not in that way," she answered, in a low voice. "I thought you—I always understood—" The memory of his professed suffering, his oft-expressed adoration for the dead Adele, checked her, filled her with a storm of doubt, and she could not finish her accusation.

He caught up the thread she dropped. "I did love Adele, I love her still—a holy, mysterious love—a love you cannot understand; my feeling for you is different, but no less high. It is the cry of a lonely, desolate man. Come to me, Viola; do not question; follow your heart's leadings, as I do." The light of her accusing young eyes pierced the armor of his defence, and he fell upon his knees before her. "I can't explain it, but it is true, Viola. I have not deceived you. I loved her—I love her still. She is vital in my life. I was sincere in all I said; but you are flesh and she is spirit. Don't you see? You can comfort me—assist me, work with me as she cannot."

As he poured out his passionate plea, a sense of injury, of disillusionment, overran the girl. She revolted from the touch of his head against her knee. "You must not talk to me that way—you belong to her." She pushed him away. "Get up. Go away from me. I hate you now."

There was something so final, so convicting in her gesture of repulsion that the man's head dropped. He covered his face and uttered a groaning cry, and so lay silently sobbing, while she looked down at him—woman-grown in that instant. His passion moved her to pity, not to love, and she put him aside gently and left the room without further word. Her master, her highest earthly guide, had fallen from his lofty place and lay grovelling at her feet. This conception, vague but massive, oppressed her heart, and lay upon her brain like a leaden cap.

At the moment she, too, despaired of life and knew not where to turn for aid.