pot; so he never cared to know, what was the fact, that this youngest
daughter of Gurney's had one of the purest contralto voices in the
States. She came home, grown, but just as shy; only tired, needing care:
no one could look in Lizzy Gurney's face without wishing to comfort and
help the child. The Gurneys were so wretchedly poor, that might be the
cause of her look. She was a woman now. Well, and then? Why, nothing
then. He was Uncle Dan still, of whom she was less afraid than of any
other living creature; that was all. Thinking, as he stood with Paul
Blecker, leaning over the gate, of how she had brought him a badly-made
havelock that morning. "You're always so kind to me," she said. "So I
am kind to her," he thought, his quiet blue eyes growing duller behind
their spectacles; "so I will be."

The Doctor opened the gate, and went in, turning into the shrubbery, and
seating himself under a sycamore.

"Don't wait for me, McKinstry," he said. "I'll sit here and smoke a bit.
Here comes the aforesaid Joseph."

He did not light his cigar, however, when the other left him; took off
his hat to let the wind blow through his hair, the petulant heat dying
out of his face, giving place to a rigid settling, at last, of the
fickle features.

A flabby, red-faced man in fine broadcloth and jaunty beaver came down
the path, fumbling his seals, and met the Captain with a puffing snort
of salutation. To Blecker, whose fancy was made sultry to-night by some
passion we know nothing of, he looked like a bloated spider coming out
of the cell where his victims were. "Gorging himself, while they and the
country suffer the loss," he muttered. But Paul was a hot-brained