good wishes of the whole community."

The man on the hearth-stone shrank back at the sight of the still, white
face, in which the eyes were like sparks of fire. His impulse had been
to go over and offer the hand of sympathy to the stricken man, but his
simple mind grasped the fact that no one might, with impunity, invade
this awful quiet. Charley was frozen in body, but his brain was awake
with the heat of "a burning fiery furnace."

Seven months of unconscious life-seven months of silence--no sight, no
seeing, no knowing; seven months of oblivion, in which the world had
buried him out of ken in an unknown grave of infamy! Seven months--and
Kathleen was married again to the man she had always loved. To the world
he himself was a rogue and thief. Billy had remained silent--Billy, whom
he had so befriended, had let decent men heap scorn and reproaches on his
memory. Here was what the world thought of him--he read the lines over
again, his eyes scorching, but his finger steady, as it traced the lines
slowly: "the obscure death . . . . ." "embezzled trustmoneys . . .
. ." "the final seal of shame upon a misspent life!"

These were the epitaphs on the tombstone of Charley Steele; dead and
buried, out of sight, out of repute, soon to be out of mind and out of
memory, save as a warning to others--an old example raked out of the
dust-bin of time by the scavengers of morality, to toss at all who trod
the paths of dalliance.

What was there to do? Go back? Go back and knock at Kathleen's door,
another Enoch Arden, and say: "I have come to my own again?" Return and
tell Tom Fairing to go his way and show his face no more? Break up this
union, this marriage of love in which these two rejoiced? Summon