WHEN Dr. Izard rose the next morning it was with a feeling of lassitude and oppression that surprised him. He had received no calls from patients the evening before, nor had he retired any later than usual. Then why this strained and nervous feeling, as if he had not slept? The snow that had fallen so heavily the day before had cleared the air, and the dazzle of sunshine finding its way into his unusually darkened den prepared him for the brilliant scene without. It was not in that direction, however, he first looked, for he was no sooner on his feet than he noticed that the green door which he always kept shut and padlocked was open, and that in the hall beyond a spade was standing, from the lower edge of which a small stream of water had run, staining the floor where it rested.

What did it mean, and what was the explanation of the dark stains like wet mould on the skirt of the long wool garment that he wore? He looked from one to the other, and the hair rose on his forehead. Summoning up all his courage he staggered to the window and drawing the curtain back with icy fingers, glanced out. Some vandal had been in the graveyard; one of the graves had been desecrated and the snow and mould lay scattered about. As he saw it he realized who the vandal had been, and though no cry left his lips, his whole body stiffened till it seemed akin to the one he had so nearly disinterred in the night. When life and feeling again pervaded his frame he sank into a chair near the window and these words fell from his lips: “My doom is upon me. I cannot escape it. The will of God be done.”

The next instant he was on his feet. He dressed himself in haste, shuddering as he bundled up the stained night-robe and thrust it into the blazing fire of the stove. Then he caught up the spade, and opening the outside door stepped into the glittering sunshine. As he did so he noticed two things, equally calculated to daunt and surprise him. The first was the double row of his own footsteps running to and fro between the step and the heap of dirt and snow beside the monument; and the other, an equally plain track of footsteps extending from the place where he stood to the gate on his left. The former were easily explainable, but the latter were a mystery; for if they had been made by some nocturnal visitor, why were they all directed toward the highway? Had not the person making them come as well as gone? Puzzled and no little moved by this mystery, he nevertheless did not pause in the work he had set for himself.

Crossing in haste to the monument, he began throwing back the icy particles of earth he had dug up in the night. Though he shuddered with something more than cold as he did so, he did not desist till he had packed the snow upon the mould and left the grave looking somewhat decent. A sleigh or two shot by on the open thoroughfare without while he was engaged in this work, and each time as he heard the bells he started in painful emotion, though he did not raise his head nor desist from his labor. When all was done he came slowly back, and pausing before the second line of footsteps he examined them more carefully.

It was a woman’s tread or that of a child, and it came from his own door. Greatly troubled he rushed into the track they had made and trampled it fiercely out. When he reached the gate he stepped into the highway. The steps had passed up the street. But what were these he now perceived in the inclosure beyond the picket fence, going straight to the house and stopping before the front door? They came from the street also, and they pointed inward and not outward. Was he the victim of some temporary hallucination, or had a woman entered the house by the never-opened front door and come out through his office? It seemed incredible, impossible, but bounding up the steps he tried the door, not knowing what he might have done in the night. He found it locked as usual and drew back confounded, muttering again with stony lips, “My ways are thickening, and the end is not far off.”

When he returned again to his office it was to replace the spade in the spot from which he had evidently taken it. This was up the spiral staircase, in a small shed adjoining the large rear hall, and as he traversed the path he had unconsciously trodden twice in the night, he tried to recall what he had done under the influence of the horrible nightmare which had left behind it such visible evidences of suffering. But his consciousness was blank regarding those hours, and it was with a crushing sense of secret and overhanging doom that he prepared for his daily work, which happily or unhappily for him promised to be more exacting than usual.

A dozen persons visited his office that morning, and each person as he came glanced over at the monument and its disturbed grave. Had any whisper of the desecration which had there taken place found way to the village? The doctor quailed at the thought, but his manner gave no sign of his inner emotion. He was even more punctilious than usual in his attention to the wants of his visitors, and did not give them by so much as a glance of his eye an opportunity for question or gossip. At eleven o’clock he went out. There was a very sick child at the other end of the town and he could reach it only by passing the Fisher cottage. It had been taken ill at daybreak and word had been brought him by a passing neighbor. He had hopes, though he hardly acknowledged them to himself, that some explanation of the footsteps which disturbed him would be found in the sickness of this child. But when he reached the Fisher house the sight of Polly’s disturbed face, peering from the parlor window, assured him that the cause of his trouble lay deeper than he had hitherto feared. The discovery was a great shock to him, and as he went on his way he asked himself why he had not stopped and talked to the girl and found out whether she had been to his house or not the night before, and if so, what she had seen.

But that he did not dare to do this was apparent even to himself; for after he had prescribed for his little patient he found himself taking another road home, a road which led him through frozen fields of untrodden snow, rather than run the risk of encountering Polly’s face again, with those new marks upon it of aversion and fear. When he re-entered his own gate it was with bowed head and shrunken form. His short walk through the village, with the discovery he had imagined himself to have made, cost him ten years of his youth. On his table there lay a letter. When he saw it a flush crossed his cheek and his form unconsciously assumed its wonted air of dignity and pride. It was from her and the room seemed to lose something of its habitual gloom from its presence. But its tenor made him grow pale again. The letter read as follows:

Dear Friend: Clarke has tried every available means to avoid the result we feared, but as you will see from the inclosed letter from Ephraim Earle, Polly has but one course before her, and that is to give her father what he demands. She has so decided to-day, and if you see no way of interfering, the money will be paid over by nine o’clock to-morrow morning. This means years of struggle for Clarke. You bade us not to apply to you till every other hope failed. We have reached that point. Faithfully yours,

Grace Unwin.