“OClarke, wait: there is the doctor now.” It was Polly who was speaking. She had come as far as the church in her search after Dr. Izard and had just seen him issuing from his own gate.

“He has a bag in his hand; he is going on one of his journeys.”

“No, no,” she protested, “I cannot have it.” And bounding forward she intercepted the doctor, just as he was about to step into his buggy. “O doctor, you are not going away; you are not going to leave me with this dreadful trouble; don’t, don’t, I pray!” The doctor, who in his abstraction had not noted her approach, started at the sound of her voice, and turning showed her a very haggard face.

“Why,” she cried, stepping back, “you are ill yourself.”

“No,” he answered shortly, drawing himself up in his old reserved manner. “I had but little sleep last night, but I am not ill. What do you want, Polly?”

“O don’t you know what I want? You, of all the town, have said he was an impostor! To you then I come as to my only hope; speak, speak, is he not my father?”

The doctor with a side glance at Clarke, who had remained in the background, drew the girl’s hand within his arm and led her a few steps away. But it seemed an involuntary movement on his part, for he presently brought her back within easy earshot of her lover.

“He does not look to me like Ephraim Earle,” he was saying. “He has not his eyes, nor does his voice sound familiar. I do not see why any one acknowledges him.”

“But they can’t help it. He knows everybody, and everything. I—I thought you had some good reason, Dr. Izard, something that would make it easy for me to deny his claims.”

“You—” The doctor’s sleepless night seemed to have had a strange effect upon him, for he stammered in speaking, he who was always so cold and precise. “You thought—” he began, but presently broke into that new, strange laugh of his, and urging Polly towards her lover, he addressed his questions to the latter. “Does this man,” he asked, “make a serious claim upon the Earle name and its rights?”

Clarke, who was always sensible when in Dr. Izard’s presence of something intangible but positive acting like a barrier between them and yet who strangely revered the doctor, summoned up his courage and responded with the respect he really felt.

“Yes,” said he; but with a certain reserve, “that is our best reason perhaps for believing him. He promises not to molest Polly, nor to make any demands upon her until she herself recognizes her duty.”

The frown which darkened the doctor’s face deepened.

“He is a deep one, then,” said he, and stood for a moment silent.

“If he is an impostor, yes,” assented Clarke; “but Lawyer Crouse, who talked with him half an hour last night, accepted him at once, and so did Mr. Sutherland.” Mr. Sutherland was the Baptist minister.

“The fools!” muttered the doctor, as much in anger as amazement; “has the whole town reached its dotage?”

Clarke, who seemed surprised at the doctor’s vehemence, quietly remarked:

“You were Mr. Earle’s best friend. If you say that this man is not he, there would of course be many to listen to you.”

But the doctor, resuming his accustomed expression, refused an answer to this suggestion, at which Polly’s face grew very pale, and she grasped his arm imploringly, saying as she did so:

“I cannot bear this uncertainty, I cannot bear to think there is any question about this matter. If he is my father, I owe him everything; if he is not——”

“Polly,”—The doctor spoke coldly but not unkindly, “marry Clarke, go with him to Cleveland where he has the promise of a fine position, and leave this arrant pretender to settle his rights himself. He will not urge them long when he finds the money gone for which he is striving.”

“You bid me do that? Then you know he is not my father.”

But the doctor instead of answering with the vigorous yes she had expected, looked aside and carelessly murmured:

“I have said that I saw no likeness in him to the man I once knew. Of course my judgment was hurried, our interview was short and I was laboring under the shock of his appearance. But if everybody else in town recognizes him as Ephraim Earle, I must needs think my opinion was warped by my surprise and the indignation I felt at what I considered a gross piece of presumption.”

“Then you do not know,” quoth poor Polly, her head sinking lower and lower on her breast.

“No,” cried the doctor, turning shortly at the word and advancing once more toward the buggy.

But at this move she sprang forward and sought again to detain him.

“But you will not go and leave me in this dreadful uncertainty,” she pleaded. “You will stay and have another talk with this man and satisfy yourself and me that he is indeed my father.”

But the stern line into which the doctor’s lip settled, assured her that in this regard he was not to be moved; and frightened, overawed by the prospect before her, she turned to Clarke and cried:

“Take me home, take me back to your mother; she is the only person who can give me any comfort.”

The doctor who was slowly proceeding to his horse’s head, looked back.

“Then you don’t like my advice,” he smiled.

She stared, remembered what he had said and answered indignantly:

“If this poor, wretched, wicked-eyed man is my father—and I should never have doubted it if you had not declared him an impostor before all the town people—then I would be a coward to desert him and seek my happiness in a place where he could not follow me.”

“Even if he is as wicked as his looks indicate?”

“Yes, yes, even if he is wicked. Who can say what caused that wickedness.”

The doctor, fumbling with the halter, stopped and seemed to muse.

“Did you ever see your father’s picture hanging in the old cottage?”

“Yes, I saw it yesterday.”

“Did that have a wicked look?”

“I do not think it had a good look.” This was said very low but it made the doctor start.

“No?” he exclaimed.

“It made me feel a little unpleasant, as if something I could neither understand nor sympathize with had met me in my father’s smile. It made him more remote, and prepared me for the heartless figure of the man who in the next few minutes claimed me as his daughter.”

“Strange!” issued from the doctor’s lips; and his face, which had been hard to read from the first, became more and more inscrutable.

“My mother, who is as wise as she is gentle, advises Polly to give up the cottage to her father; but not to live in it with him till his character is better understood and his intentions made manifest.”

“Then your mother sees this man in the same light as others do?”

“She certainly considers him to be Ephraim Earle. It is not natural for her to think otherwise under the circumstances.”

“I do indeed stand alone,” quoth the doctor.

“When I told her,” pursued Clarke, “what you had said, she looked amazed but she said nothing to show that she had changed her opinion. I do not think any one was really affected by your words.”

Something in the tone in which this was said showed where Clarke himself stood. A bitter smile crossed the doctor’s lip, and he seemed more than ever anxious to be gone.

“I shall be away,” he said, “several days. When I come back I hope to see this thing settled.”

“I hate him,” burst from Polly’s lips. “I am terrified at my thoughts of him, but in my inner consciousness I know him to be my father, and I shall try and do my duty by him; shall I not, Clarke?”

Clarke, who had felt himself almost unnecessary in this scene, grasped at the opportunity which this appeal gave him and took her tenderly by the arm.

“We will try and do our duty,” he corrected, “praying Providence to help us.”

And the doctor, with a glance at them both, sprang into his buggy and was driving off when he rose and flung back at Polly this final word of paternal advice:

“He is the claimant; you are the one in possession. Let him prove himself to be the man he calls himself.”

Clarke, dropping Polly’s arm, sprang after the doctor.

“Wait! one moment,” he cried. “What do you call proof? You who knew him so well in the past, tell us how to make sure that his pretensions are not false.”

The doctor, drawing up his horse, paused for a moment in deep thought.

“Ask him,” he finally said, “to show you the medal given him by the French government. As it has never been found in his house, and as it was useless to raise money upon, he should, if he is Ephraim Earle, be able to produce it. Till he does, I advise you to cherish doubts in his regard, and above all to keep that innocent and enthusiastic young girl out of his clutches.”

And with a smile which would have taken more than Clarke’s experience with the world to understand, much less to explain, the doctor whipped up his horse and disappeared down the road towards the station.