The doubt and distrust of all humanity, first implanted in Winn Hardy's mind by his friend and adviser, Nickerson, was now working its inevitable injury. Much of it had been brushed away during Winn's association with the simple and honest people of Rockhaven and especially Jess; but now that he was back again in the city and in touch with its pushing, selfish life, once more cynicism ruled him. His vocation as reporter paid poorly; he was in daily contact with unscrupulous and suspicious men, saw poverty begging in alleyways and arrogant wealth riding in carriages, men obsequiously bowing before the rich and snubbing the poor, and on all sides and in all ways he was made to realize that money was the god the city worshipped, and show, its religion.

On Sunday, when the usual morning chimes answered each other, his thoughts flew to Rockhaven and the two bells there; but when with his aunt, in church, he listened to the operatic singing and classic sermon, it all seemed to lack heart and sincerity, and not one solitary note of supplication entered the minister's prayer. Then the elegantly dressed ladies who greeted one another as at a reception, the men who looked bored and at the close of the service seemed relieved, each and all seemed to Winn to be there on exhibition.

Then, too, his moral safeguards were in daily danger, and the sneering Nickerson, their assailant.

"Well, old boy," he said to Winn one evening at the club, "how do you like penny-a-lining these cold winter days? Is an editorship any nearer in sight?"

"Nothing in sight for me except one demnition grind," replied Winn, disconsolately; "I get discouraged sometimes and think I am no good on earth."

Nickerson looked at him with a sarcastic smile.

"Winn, my dear fellow," he said at last, "I'm going to be very candid with you, so don't be angry with me. To begin with you are too honest and too good-hearted. You think of others first and yourself last, and then you have scruples. Now scruples don't go here in the city, and whoever cultivates them gets left. In the first place, Weston & Hill played you for a dupe, and if I hadn't come to the rescue, you'd have been stranded on the island and out five hundred, and the natives would have been ready to ride you on a rail. Then when we saved your bacon and you knew they were two thieves, you even returned them the little extra money they had sent you to pay the men. I won't say anything about the heroic way you made your aunt's loss good. It was heroic, but it wasn't sense.

"Now, after all this eye-opening experience, and you on your uppers, so to speak, I offered to start you in a lawful business, you won't have it, simply because it smacks of gambling! Winn, you are one of the best fellows in the world, and I like you, but you are a fool—net!"

"Well, I'll keep on being one," answered Winn warmly (for no man enjoys plain truth), "before I'll open a bucket shop and knowingly rob people."

"Yes, and walk while the rest ride," asserted Jack, tersely, "you know the old deacon's advice to his son just starting out in life,—'Make money, my son, honestly if you can, but make it!'"

"All very good," replied Winn, "but old. I doubt whether you can change my fool ideas, if you talk till doomsday; but you may mellow them. And that reminds me of another fool thing I've done. I bought the sole right, title, and deed of the Rockhaven Granite Company's quarry a few weeks ago."

"The wisest buy you ever made, my boy," answered Jack, quickly; "and now if you will hustle around and get some men to put money into a new company, you will be in luck once more." Then, as another idea came to this quick-witted man of the world, he added, "What's the matter with Jess Hutton and all the money we made for him?"

But Winn was silent, while a tide of memory swept over his feelings. And in it was Mona, with her tender love, and Jess, with the heart and hand he offered at parting, and all the good people on the island whom Winn knew to be his friends. And as all the possibilities Rockhaven contained came back to him, now it suddenly dawned upon him that Jack Nickerson had named him rightly.

"I see I've put you to sleep," continued Jack, after the long pause while he watched Winn, "and now I'll wake you up. I saw Ethel Sherman in a box at the theatre last night, with our mutual friend, Simmons. He must have reached his second childhood!"

Then Winn did wake up.

And more than that, a few unconsidered trifles connected with this same vivacious Ethel assumed index shape. He recalled that she had for the past six weeks specified the evenings she would be at home to him, for a week ahead. He also recalled that a plenitude of choicest flowers had always graced her parlor lately.

"And why not," he answered coolly, "old Simmons is a widower worth a million, has just built an elegant new residence of the granite we quarried, and Ethel's in the market. I think she shows good sense—at least your kind of good sense, Jack."

"Yes, and of all experienced people," asserted Nickerson, defiantly. "Sentiment is a fine thing in books or on the stage, it may influence silly girls or callow boys, but it's out of date in this age."

And Winn, recalling his own early episode with Ethel, and the lesson in life that for weeks had been forced upon him, was more than half inclined to believe his friend to be right.

And yet, as he thought of this prospective January and May affair, and a fossil like Simmons, with dyed hair, false teeth, and certainly sixty years wrinkling his face, he felt disgusted with Ethel. And the more he thought of the groove he was in, of the cold, selfish, grasping city life where mammon was king and sentiment a jest, the more his heart turned to Rockhaven. Then the thought of Mona came back to him, and a yearning for her, impossible to resist. And with it, self-reproach that he had let his own discouragement control his actions so long. A few days more did he waver, and then his heart's impulse won.

The winter had nearly passed and the days were lengthening when this impulse came, but he waited no longer.

"I'm going to Rockhaven," he said to his aunt that night, "and shall be gone a few days. I've obtained a week's leave of absence from the paper, and start to-morrow. I want to see Jess Hutton and some of my old friends there. I've also an idea that possibly the quarry can be started again. If I can bring it about," he added, after a pause, "how would you feel about loaning me a few thousand dollars, auntie?"

Then the motherly side of Mrs. Converse spoke out.

"I'll do it gladly, Winn," she responded. "I've felt all along that the money you saved me was more yours than mine, and you shall have all of it that you need."

And when Winn left the city, as once before, a new courage and new hopes tinged his horizon.

And first and foremost in them was the flowerlike face and soulful eyes of Mona.

The wisest of us, however, are but mere bats in this world, blindly flying hither and thither. At times one may, by sheer good luck, fly free; and then again we strike our heads against a wall.

Yet we think we are very wise.

And so, Winn Hardy, full of hope and love, found, when he reached the coast town where the steamer Rockhaven made landing, that her trips were but twice a week now and he had a full day to wait.

How slowly it passed while he chafed at the delay! how his eagerness to be with Mona grew! how his longing increased as he counted the hours he must wait! and with all mingled a self-reproach, need not be specified. For it had dawned upon Winn that his conclusions regarding Mona might have been wrong, and once we feel that we have made a mistake, we soon feel sure that it must be so.

And Winn was now certain.

But he would and could repair it easily. All that was necessary was to assure Mona that he had been discouraged or he would have written again, and to reproach her gently for neglecting to answer his letter.

How easily we plan excuses for our own conduct, and how like a child's toy we are apt to consider a woman's heart!

When, after a day's wait that seemed a week to Winn, the Rockhaven made landing, he leaped aboard to grasp Captain Roby's hand almost as he would a father's. But a half gale was blowing outside, the captain nervously anxious to unload, and start back; and only a word of greeting did Winn receive until the steamer was well under way toward Rockhaven. Then, feeling privileged, he entered the little pilot house.

"Well, Captain Roby," he said, "how are you and how's the island?"

"Oh, it's thar yit," answered that bronze-faced skipper, shifting the wheel a point and heading seaward, "an' likely to stay thar. It seems sorter nat'rel to see ye, Mr. Hardy," he added cheerfully, "an' I'm right glad to git the chance. We've been wonderin' what become o' ye an' how the quarryin' business was comin' out. Ye ain't thinkin' o' startin' it up agin, air ye?"

"Possibly," answered Winn, "in fact, that is a part of my errand here, and to make you all a visit. The old company failed, as, I presume, you know, and I've bought the quarry myself now."

"I'm mighty glad on't," replied the captain cordially, "an' so'll all on us be. We've sorter took to ye, Mr. Hardy."

"And how is my old friend, Jess?" asked Winn, unable to withhold that query longer, "and Mrs. Hutton and her daughter and Mrs. Moore?"

"Wal, Jess an' the Widder Hutton took a notion to git hitched long 'fore Christmas," answered the captain slowly, "an' they're gone to the city 'n' taken Mona with 'em. We gin 'em a great send-off, and I run ashore jist a purpose for 'em. It's curus ye haint seen Jess up thar. I'd a-s'posed ye would."

Winn's heart sank.

"When do you go back, captain?" he said finally, trying to hide his bitter disappointment. "I supposed you made daily trips as usual."

"Only Tuesdays and Fridays," he answered; "thar ain't much need o' runnin' oftener."

And this was Friday!

And Winn, the now ardent Romeo, had three full days and four nights to spend on Rockhaven, and Juliet was not there!

There are many of the fair sex who will say that it served him right.

And what a picture of cheerless desolation was this sea-girt island when Winn neared it! A half gale was blowing, the waves leaping high against the snow-topped cliffs, and as the Rockhaven, rolling, pitching, and half coated with frozen spray, turned into the little harbor and neared her dock, only one man, shivering in oil skins, was there to meet her.

"I wish ye'd put up with me," said Captain Roby to Winn, when the steamer's plank was shoved out. "We'd be more'n glad to hev ye, an'll make ye welcome."

And Winn, dreading the empty white cottage next to Mrs. Moore's fully as much as that excellent woman's curiosity, accepted the captain's offer. That evening, in spite of Winn's disappointment, was a pleasant one to him, for the news of his arrival had flown like the wind, and a constant stream of callers came to the captain's house. It seemed as if all Rockhaven was desirous of extending a welcome hand, and from Parson Bush down to men whose names Winn had never known, they kept coming. Never before had he been so lionized or made to feel that he had so many friends, and so cordially did they one and all greet him that, had the Rev. Bush suggested that they all join in a hymn of thankfulness, Winn would not have been more surprised. It recalled the parting words of Jess, and in a forcible way.

But alas! that genial philosopher was absent!

Winn, however, saw his opening, and with a little natural pride, stated that he now owned the quarry, and, if some capital could be furnished by these island people, he was in a position to put in a matter of five or ten thousand dollars, and the industry would be started anew. Then as a climax to this proposition, he read to them the history of the Rockhaven Granite Company and gave a description of the auction of its assets.

But he did not mention the price he had paid for the quarry.

It was midnight ere the crowd dispersed and Winn, proud and happy, was shown to his room. But the next day a reaction came; for when he called upon Mrs. Moore, as he felt he must, the closed white cottage next door and the little dooryard, now under snow, where Mona had reared her flowers, seemed like a tomb. His worthy landlady was overjoyed to see him, however, and gave an explicit account of the wedding that had occurred, of Mrs. Hutton's dress, how pretty Mona looked and how happy all were. She, too, supposed Winn must have heard of it, and marvelled greatly that the Hutton family could have been in the city now three months, and Winn not meet them. Where they were stopping, what doing, and when they were to return, she knew not. So Winn left her, as much in the dark as ever.

And then, though the snow lay thick on the ledges swept by the ocean's winds, like a love-lorn swain he must visit Norse Hill and go over to the gorge to peer into its interior, and the cave, then back to the old tide mill and to the village. When Sunday came he was really glad to attend church, and by evening was so disconsolate that he wished for wings to fly to the mainland. In spite of cordiality, Rockhaven was now a desolate spot.

And when Tuesday came and he sailed away, the sole passenger over the misty ocean with Captain Roby, Winn was a wiser and sadder man. When he reached the city he felt that if he could but find Mona, to kneel at her feet and beg for her love would be a blessed privilege.