This, then, was the outcome of March Gilchrist’s iron-clad resolve to forget in serious work one who could never make him or his family happy!

Verily, the ways and variations of a man in love are past finding out by ordinary means and everyday reasoning. Our sensible swain could only plead with his sister in defense of his fast grown passion, that the girl “suited him.” Having decided within eight hours that no alliance could be more unsuitable than one with Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister, he had cast himself headforemost into the thick of impassioned declaration of a devotion the many waters of doubt could not drown, or the fires of opposition destroy.

Dizzied and overwhelmed as she was by his vehemence, Hetty was the first to regain the firm ground of reason. He had seated her, with gentle respect, upon the cushion that had pillowed her head, and dropping on one knee, the “true, bonny eyes” alight with eagerness, poured out the story whose outlines we know. Earnestness took the tinge of happiness as he was suffered to proceed; the deep tones shook under the weight of emotion. Not until she made a resolute effort to disengage her hands, and he saw the burning blushes fade into dusky pallor and her eyes grow set and troubled, did his heart begin to sink. Then the gallant, knightly soul forbore importunity that might be persecution. If his suit distressed her for any cause whatsoever, he would await her disposition to hearken to the rest.

Releasing her, he arose and stood a little space away, respectfully attending upon her pleasure.

“I did not mean to impose all this upon reluctant ears,” he said, when she did not speak. Her face was averted, her hands pressed hard together. The rust-brown bandeaux, ruffled by the pressure of her head upon the pillow, gleamed in the dying sunlight like a nimbus. The slight, girlish figure was not a Madonna’s. It might be a Mary at the tomb in Bethany before the “Come forth!” was spoken.

“A word from you will send me away,” continued March, with manly dignity, “if you wish to dismiss me and the subject forever. I cannot stop loving you, but I can promise not to annoy you by telling you of a love you cannot receive.”

“Annoy me!” repeated the poor, stiff lips. “Annoy me! You must surely know, Mr. Gilchrist, that that is not a word to be used by you to me!”

“No?” coming a step nearer, eye kindling and voice softening. “You will let me try to overcome indifference, then—will you not?”

In the depth of her distress she appreciated the adroit twist he gave her answer. The corners of the pale mouth stirred. Her strength was slipping from her. She must be brief and decisive.

“If that were all”—looking courageously into the glowing eyes—“I would give a very different answer from the one you must accept without questioning. I know that I can never give any other, unprepared though I was for what you have said. There are reasons not immediately connected with myself why I ought not to think for a moment of—the matter you were speaking of. You have paid me the greatest compliment a man can offer a woman. But while my sister and the children need me as they do now I must not think of leaving them, and I see no prospect of their needing me less for years and years to come. My sister opened her house to me when I was orphaned and homeless. I owe her more than I could make you understand. She is peculiarly dependent upon me. Hester could not do without me. You have seen that. I cannot bear to think how she would suffer if I were to go away.”

In her desire to deal gently and fairly with him she had made a concession fatal to the integrity of her cause. He laid hold of it at once.

“Mrs. Wayt has a husband; the children have a father. He is a man in the prime of life, whose talents are approved by the Church. He is popular, and in the receipt of a good salary. Fairhill will probably remain Hester’s home for many years to come. If this is all that separates us—why, my darling——”

The strangest expression flashed over her face—a wild ecstasy of joy that gave place, the next second, to anguish as wild. She put her hands over the tell-tale face, and bent her forehead upon her knees.

“Don’t! oh, don’t!” she moaned. “This is too hard! too cruel! If you could only know all, you would not urge me! I did not think you could be so unkind!”

“Unkind? To you, Hetty?”

“No! no!” moved to tears by the hurt tone, and hurrying over the words. “You could never be that to anybody—much less—I cannot say what I would!”

March knelt down by her, and raised her head with tender authority she could not resist. He wiped the tears from her face with his own handkerchief; smiled down into the wet eyes. Loving intimacy with his mother and sister had taught him wondrously winsome ways.

“Listen to me, dear!” as he would address a grieving child. “Sometime, when you are quite willing to talk freely to me of this awful ‘all,’ I will prove to you how chimerical it is. Until then, nothing you can say or do can shake my purpose of making you my wife, in God’s own good time. We were made for one another, Hetty! I have known that this great while. I am positive I could convince you of it, if you would give me a chance.”

She arose nervously, her hands chafing one another in an action that was like wringing them in impatience or anguish.

“I must go, Mr. Gilchrist! It is wrong to allow you to say all this. Then, too, Hester will be uneasy and need me.”

“Let me go with you and explain why you have outstayed your time,” March suggested, demurely. “We could not have a more sympathetic confidante than Hester. And I must tell somebody.”

She looked frightened.

“There is nothing to tell! There never can be. Cannot you see? haven’t I convinced you of this?”

“Not in the least. Until you can lay your hand upon your heart—the heart you and I know to be so true to itself and to others—and say, with the lips that cannot frame a lie—‘March Gilchrist, I can never love you in any circumstances!’ I shall not see this other ‘never’ you articulate so fiercely. If you want to get rid of me instantly, and for all time, look at me and say it now—Hetty!”

His lingering enunciation of the name she had never thought beautiful before, would of itself have deprived her of the power to obey. She stood dumb, with drooping head and cheeks burning red as the sunset, her figure half turned away, a lovely study of maiden confusion, had the spectator been cool enough to note artistic effects.

Chivalric compassion restrained all indication of the triumph a lover must feel in such a position.

“I will not detain you, if you must go in,” he said, in a voice that was gentlest music to her ear. “Forgive me for keeping you so long. I know how conscientious you are, and how necessary you are to Hester. We understand one another. I will be very patient, dear, and considerate of those whose claims are older than mine. But there is one relation that outranks all others in the sight of God and man. That relation you hold to me. Don’t interrupt me, love! Nothing can alter the fact. Give me those!” as she stooped blindly for shawl and cushion. “It is my duty to relieve you of all burdens which you will permit me to carry for you. You would rather not have me go to the house with you?” interpreting her gesture and look. “Only to the gate, then? You see how reasonable I can be when possibilities are demanded.”

He made a remark upon the agreeable change in the weather within the last twenty-four hours, and upon the sweet repose of the Sabbath after the tumult of the National holiday, as they walked on, side by side. At the gate he stayed her with his frank, pleasant laugh.

“I have a confession I don’t mind making now. At half-past twelve o’clock last night I stood on this spot watching you. Thor and I were camping out in the orchard. It was too hot to go into the house. I heard a queer clicking, and saw a light in this direction, and came to look after Homer’s Jack-o’-lantern. Instead, I saw you at the study window, busy—oh! how wickedly busy—with the typewriter!”

He stopped abruptly, for the face into which he smiled was bloodless, the eyes aghast. She made a movement as if to grasp the shawl and pillow and rush away—then her forehead fell upon the hand that clutched at the pickets for steadiness.

“Are you angry?” pleaded March, amazed and humble. “If I had not loved you, I should not have been here. Was it an impertinent intrusion?”

“No! And I am not angry—only startled.” Her complexion was still ashy, and her tongue formed the syllables carefully. “I can understand that you must have thought strange of what you saw. But I am used to typewriting. I earned fifty dollars”—with mingled pride and defiance March thought engaging—“last winter by copying law papers. And I told you—everybody must know how poor we are.”

“I know more than that, dearest!” laying his hand over her cold fingers. “I surmised when I saw Mrs. Wayt dictating to you, what it meant.”

She was all herself again. In defense of her sister’s secret, as he imagined when she began to speak, she rallied her best forces. Her speech was grave, dignified, and direct.

“I do not know what you surmised. The truth is that Mr. Wayt was taken suddenly ill last night. His sermon must be ready by this morning. There was not time to get a substitute. So my sister found his notes. They were very full. She read them aloud to me. Nobody else can make them out. I copied the sermon with the machine from her dictation. You will understand that we would not like to have this spoken of. Good-evening!”

She was beyond reach in a moment, in another beyond call.

March went back to the sylvan retreat that may be regarded as the stage set for the principal scenes of our story. Step and heart were light, and the same might be said of a brain that whirled like a feather in a gale. While he had been loath to admit the gravity of the misgivings that had embittered the slow hours between 11:30 A. M. and 7 o’clock P. M. of that eventful Sunday, he was keenly alive to the rapture of their removal. What a boorish bat he had been to suffer a suspicion of the lofty rectitude of the noblest woman upon earth to enter his mind! How altogether simple and convincing was her explanation of what should have been no mystery to any honorable man! Yet he could not be ashamed, in the fullness of his happiness. He called himself all the hard names in his vocabulary with cheerful volubility, and gloried in the lesson he had thus learned of implicit trust in the girl he loved. No accumulation of circumstantial evidence or even the witness of the eye should ever call up another shadow of a shade of doubt. Among other occasions for thankfulness was the recollection that he had not let a lisp of what he had seen last night and suspected this morning, escape him in conversation with his mother and sister. He found himself tracing, with a fine sense of the drollery of the conceit, the analogy between prostrate Dagon, sans arms, legs, and head, and the suspicion which had menaced the destruction of his happiness. Mutilated, prone, and harmless, it lay on the threshold of the temple of love and truth, ugly rubbish to be thrust forever out of sight.

He had hardly noticed, in the ecstasy of relief, Hetty’s haste to be gone after she had explained her nocturnal industry. He passed as lightly over the incoherence that had replied to his question when he could see her again.

“Give me time to think! Not for a day or two! Not until you hear from me!” she had said just before reaching the gate.

He was shrewd enough to see how well taken was his vantage ground. She had not demurred at his stipulation. He was positive, in the audacity of youth and passion, that she would never utter the words he had dictated. The turf under the tree was flattened by her reclining form. He lay down upon it, his arms doubled under his head for a pillow, Thor taking his place beside him. The golden green changed into dull ruddy light, this into purple ash, and this into gray that was at first warm, then cold. The second vesper bell had set the air to quivering and sobbed musically into silence that embalmed the memory of the music. Rapt in dreams, in summer fragrance, and in tender dusks, the lover lay until the stars twinkled through rifts in the massed leaves. Now and then, the far-off roll of an organ and the sweet hymning of accompanying voices were borne across his reverie, as the wanderer through the twilight of an August day meets waves of warm, perfumed air, or currents of balsamic odors floating from evergreen heights.

At nine o’clock the moon showed the edge of a coy cheek above the horizon hills, and shortly thereafter March heard the click of the garden gate. Instinctively he put out his hand to keep Thor quiet, an unwarrantable idea that Hetty might revisit the spot darting through his mind. The shuffling of feet over the sward quieted his leaping heart. In another minute he distinguished the outlines of a figure stealing across the moonlit spaces separating black blotches of shade. As it neared the covert he spoke quietly, not to alarm the intruder.

“Good-evening, Homer.”

“O Lord!” The three-quarter-witted wight bounded a foot from the ground, then collapsed into a shaking huddle.

“It is I—Mr. Gilchrist,” March hastened to add. “I am sorry I frightened you.”

“Now—I was jes a-lookin’ fer a light I see from the back porch down this ’ere way,” uttered Homer, in an agitated drawl.

March could see the coarse fingers rubbing against the backs of his hands, and a ray of light touched the pendulous jaw.

“It was the match I struck to light a cigar I smoked a while ago,” he said. “I dare say that may account for the light you have seen at other times.”

“Ye-es, sir”—dubiously. “I been saw the light lots o’ nights, when I aint spoke of it. ’Tain’t like er sergar. It’s like a lantern a-swinging this er way”—swaying one hand—“I clumb this tree one night, an’ sot thar till nigh mornin’, a-waitin’ an’ a-watchin’ fer it ter come again. There’s a man what tole me ’twas the devil a-watchin’ out for me.”

“I am surprised you try to catch him. From what I have heard, he is a slippery chap.”

“No-ow—I aint a-feerd on him fer myself. Now, I’d be loath fer him to worry Miss Hetty.”

“You are a good fellow, Homer! A brave fellow!” responded the listener, with sudden energy. “When you do get on the track of the light, let me know, and I’ll lend a hand to nab the devil.”

“Ye-es, sir! Now, I’ve been a-turnin’ over in my mind what that man say to me. He’s a man as ought to know what he’s talkin’ about. He t’reatened me orful a couple o’ times, sence we come to Fairhill. Sometimes I can’t sleep fer thinkin’ ’bout it. ‘You stay outen that orchard!’ he say. ‘Ther’ war a man murdered thar onct,’ he tell me, ‘an’ the devil is a-lookin’ fer him. Ef he come acrost you he’ll ketch you by a mistake,’ he say. But then, there’s Miss Hetty, you know, Mr. Gilchris’!”

“What under heaven has she to do with your man, or his devil, or the light? Who is the man who threatened you? Does he live in Fairhill?”

Homer plucked at his lower lip and glanced apprehensively around.

“I dunno!” he answered, in sullen evasion. “I met him on the street one day. Two times I come acrost him in the orchard. Onct he come to the garding gate. That was the time he tell me ’bout the murder an’ the devil.”

“He is a cruel, rascally liar!” cried March indignantly. “And you don’t know his name? What is he like? Did you ever speak of this to Miss Hetty?”

“No, sir. She got ’nough to fret her a’ready, Miss Hetty has. I’m ’fraid for her ’bout the man. She aint ’fraid o’ nothin’. ‘You do what I tell you, Homer,’ sez she, ‘an’ I’ll stan’ between you an’ harm,’ she say. But she aint know ’bout the devil. Nor I aint heerd o’ the murder when she tell me that. That mought make a dif’rence.”

“She is all right, all the same. She is always right. Mind her, and you’re sure to be safe. When did you last see this man who is so well acquainted with the devil?”

An uneasy pause, during which Homer cracked each one of the knuckle-joints in his left hand.

“I dunno! I don’ jis reklec’! You won’t mention him to Miss Hetty—nor to nobody—will you please not, Mr. Gilchris’? He’s an orful man! He’d get even with Miss Hetty, some way, sure’s you born, Mr. Gilchris’? ‘Nurver you let on a word to her!’ sez he to me—‘or ’twill be the wustest day she ever see,’ he sez.”

“Why, this is outrageous!” ejaculated the aroused listener. “Do you suppose I will allow this sort of thing to go on? I insist upon knowing who the wretch is! He’ll find himself behind bars before he is a day older, if I get hold of him.”

“Now”—resumed Homer, dazed and dull—“you’d better not meddle nor make with him. Me’n’ Miss Hetty, we could manage ’bout him, but when he sot ’bout fetchin’ the devil in—that aint a fa’r shake—that aint! I’ll say that much, ef I die fer it—’taint by no means ‘fa’r nor squar’!”

“Pshaw!” March laughed in vexed amusement. “Did you ever know the devil to do the fair and square thing? Or any of the devil’s men? Why didn’t you set Mr. Wayt after your friend? It’s his trade to fight Old Nick, you know.”

“Yes, sir. So I been heerd tell. What’s that?”

It was the sound of the gate-latch falling into the socket, and firm quick footsteps.

“O Lord!” whispered Homer again. “Don’t let on as I’ve been here!”

In a twinkling, he had gone up the tree like a cat.

By the time March recognized the latest comer, the rustling boughs were still. Thor growled fiercely. His master advanced a step into the moonlight.

“Be quiet!” to the dog. “Good-evening, Mr. Wayt! The beauty of the night has tempted you out, as well as myself.”

“Ah, Mr. Gilchrist!”—suave and stately as usual. “As you say, it is a glorious night. I have been sitting for half an hour with your respected parents. Seeing you change color suddenly during the morning service, and missing you from church this afternoon, I feared lest you had been taken ill, and so went over to inquire.

“Mrs. Gilchrist appeased my anxiety by saying that yours was a passing indisposition. I was the more solicitous because I have suffered all day from the onslaught of my constitutional enemy, ‘the rash’ and crucial headache which my mother gave me. It is more than malady. It is affliction! requiring pagan fortitude and Christian resignation. There is some occult connection between it and the course of the natural sun in the heavens. It seized me this morning with the rising of the god of day and left me at the going down of the same. Mrs. Wayt will have it that it is the penalty for much study which, if not weariness to the flesh, occasionally revenges itself in neuralgic pangs. I know no fatigue while the oracular rage of composition is upon me. Last night it possessed me! I wrote the entire sermon to which you listened this morning between the hours of half-past nine Saturday night and four o’clock this morning. In all that time I did not leave my desk. The thunder-storm wrought strange, glorious excitement in my brain. It was as if seven thunders uttered their voices to the ears of my spirit.”

The Rev. Mr. Wayt prodded holes in the turf with his cane while speaking, holding it in his right hand almost at arm’s length, in a straight line from his body. His face showed chalky-white in the moon rays, his brows and hair very black; his eyes glittered, the smile upon his thin, wide-lipped mouth was apparent in the clearing radiance. He was disposed to be affably loquacious to the heir of a rich parishioner, and the pastor’s “influence with young men” was one of his specialties. This important member of an important class did not interrupt him, and the intent expression of his figure—his back was to the moon—was pleasantly provocative to continued eloquence.

“The Sabbath has been superb—truly superb!” resumed the orator, pulling out the cane after an unusual artesian feat in jabbing it into the earth. “I could think of nothing as I looked out at daybreak upon the brightening face of nature but Mrs. Barbauld’s ‘rose that’s newly washed by the shower.’ My spirit put on wings to meet the new morning. I said, aloud, in a sort of divine transport: ‘This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!’”

“Do you ever preach extemporaneously, Mr. Wayt?” asked March.

The sentence passed his lips almost unawares. In his perplexity and disdain, he spoke at random. He could not stand here all night, the victim of the modern Coleridge. He recollected, while the flowing periods went over him, that the Rev. Percy’s admirers likened him to the long-winded poet. The girl of his heart in esse and of his home in posse might be Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister, but Mr. Wayt himself was an imposing liar and hypocrite, who disgraced the coat on his back. The sooner she was removed from his house the better. He credited poor Tony with more sense than he was reputed to possess, in that he doubted, inferentially, his employer’s powers as an exorcist.

“Now and then, my dear sir, now and then! But I long ago arrived at the conclusion that natural fluency is a lure to indolence. Whatever is worth the hearing should be worth careful preparation. The vice versa occurs to you, of course. I would give my audience ripe matter, the slow accretion of amber-clear thought, not the fervid exudation of momentary excitement. Every line of this morning’s sermon was written out in full. The reporter of a New York paper took it from my hand as I descended from the pulpit. ‘Mr. Wayt!’ he said, ‘that discourse can be printed without the alteration of a word. It is perfect!’”

The man’s supreme egotism pushed March into indiscretion, which he afterward considered dishonorable.

“You never use the typewriter, then?”

“Occasionally,” carelessly. “I might say, semi-occasionally. But not when I am in the Spirit—as I reverently believe I was last night. Mrs. Wayt is a deft operator on it. She learned expressly to copy my sermons and lectures for the press. What will not a good wife do for her husband?”

“What, indeed?” assented March fervently.

He was thinking of the wifely equivocations to which he had hearkened on the way to church, and, with genuine satisfaction, how straightforward was Hetty’s simple tale of the sermon-writing episode. Again he resolved to tear her out of this web of needless deceits at the earliest possible moment.

He left the vicinity of the apple tree, partly to shake off his companion, partly to allow Homer opportunity to escape. Once he had his lips open to intimate his presence in the orchard at midnight, and that he had seen the light in the study. The reverend humbug should be warned of the danger of gratuitous and wholesale lying. He withheld the caution. It was not his province to reprove a man so much his senior, and—he added mentally—such an old offender.

Mr. Wayt sauntered on with him to the gate opening into the Gilchrist shrubbery, bade him “good-night,” and marched back. March leaned upon the fence, seeming to stare at the moon, and enjoying a nightcap cigar, until the long, black figure entered the parsonage garden. While the young man lingered he saw Homer drop, monkeylike, to the earth and skulk homeward, keeping in the shadow when he could.

“I would sooner take the fool’s chances of evading the devil than his pompous and pious master’s!” soliloquized Mrs. Gilchrist’s son.

Hetty was dusting the big parlors next morning, and making ineffectual attempts to evolve coziness out of carpeted space, when a cough at the door attracted her notice.

Homer stood there, military cap in hand, and wet up to the knees with dew. His love for flowers was a passion, only surpassed by his exquisite tenderness for dumb animals and children. Hetty had said of her protÉgÉ that he had the soul of a painter-poet, but that the wires were cut between spirit and speech. He had been on his knees since there was light enough to show the difference between weeds and precious plants, cleaning out the garden borders.

“Now” (fumbling with his shabby headgear), “I was wishful fer to speak with ye before ennybody else came down. Leastways, Mary Ann, she’s in the kitchen, but don’t count, bein’ busy an’ out of the way.”

Hetty smiled languidly. Her eyes were heavy-lidded; her motions slow for her. She had lain all night, staring into the blackness above her, now crying to a deaf heaven to show her a plain path for her feet, now trembling with ecstatic anguish in the recollection of the interview that opened a vista of Eden she yet dared not enter.

“Come what may, he has called me darling!” she was thinking for the hundredth time, as the interruption came.

“What is it, Homer? Are your flowers all right?”

He ventured, after a glance at his feet, to step upon the unbroken breadths of Brussels.

“Now—I was up a tree in the orchard las’ night. An’ Mr. Gilchris’—the young one—and Mr. Wayt, they were a-talkin’ on the groun’ under the tree——”

Hetty wheeled upon him with blazing eyes and cheeks.

“You were in the orchard! In what tree? When? But no!” Her excitement subsided as quickly as it had arisen. “You were in the house when I came in. Go on!” She drew a long breath.

Homer twiddled his thumbs in the crown of his cap. His speech could never be hurried. If urged to talk fast, he was dumb.

“Now, I was up in that big tree where the picter was painted. Mr. Gilchris’—the young Mr. Gilchris’—he war a-lyin’ onto the grass when I came along. ’Twar after you had gone upstairs—nigh onto ten o’clock, I guess, or may be nine—I aint certain. I’d saw the same light, an’, for all them boys ken say, I’ve been saw it many a time——”

“Never mind the light.” Hetty said it patiently. “Tell me how you happened to climb the tree.”

“Now, Mr. Gilchris’—the young gentleman—he spoke very civil an’ kind to me, an’ we war talkin’ quite a spell, when I heerd Mr. Wayt a-comin’, an’ I clumb the tree so’s he wouldn’t see me, an’ may be go fur me, you know. An’ while I war in the tree I heerd him a-tellin’ Mr. Gilchris’—I meantersay the young Mr. Gilchris’—how he’d sot up ’tell daybreak, four o’clock Sat’day night, a figurin’ onto his sermon what he preached on Sunday——”

“Homer!”

“Yes, ma’am! He war talkin’ very high Scotch, mos’ly like he does all times, ’specially to comp’ny-folks, but I got the sense of that much. He said as how he an’ the thunder-storm they figured up the sermon together, near’s I could make out. An’ Mr. Gilchris’—the young gentleman—he said precious little—an’ Mr. Wayt, he splurged out considerable ’bout seein’ the sun rise an’ so forth, an’ ’bout his headache comin’ on an’ a-goin off with the sun. An’ then the two of ’em walked off quite frien’ly, an’ soon’s as they was out o’ sight, I lighted out and come home.”

Hetty was sitting upon the sofa, too sick and weak to stand.

“Are you sure that you heard all this? Did Mr. Gilchrist know you were in the tree?”

“Now—he see me go up. I ast him not to let on to him. But what I come to say war, ’taint noways nor nurver safe to say what aint jes’ true, jes’ for the sake of talkin’ big, an’ Mr. Wayt, bein’ a edicated man, he’d ought to be tole that. T’ould ’a’ been better not to say nuthin’ ’bout Sat’day night ’thout somebody ast h’m.”

“There!” His young mistress put out her hand imperatively. “That will do. Don’t speak of this to anybody else. Go back to your work.”

On their way to school, the twins left a thin envelope at Judge Gilchrist’s door. It was addressed to March.