himself. "But it seems a pity--"

He appeared to plunge into profound meditation.

"I say, Ellen, you like her; don't you? ...Don't see how you can help
it. She's a wonder!"

"Who? Miss Orr?"

"Of course! Say, Ellen, if you knew what that girl has gone through,
without a murmur; and now I'm afraid-- By George! we ought to spare
her."

"We?"

"Yes; you and I. You can do a lot to help, Ellen, if you will. That
old man you saw is sick, hardly sane. And no wonder."

He stopped short and stared fixedly at his companion.

"Did you guess who he was?" he asked abruptly.

Ellen reflected. "I can guess--if you'll give me time."

Jim made an impatient gesture. "That's just what I thought," he
growled. "There'll be the devil to pay generally."

"Jim," said Ellen earnestly, "if we are to help her, you must tell me
all about that old man."

"_She_ wanted to tell everybody," he recollected gloomily. "And why
not you? Imagine an innocent child set apart from the world by
another's crime, Ellen. See, if you can, that child growing up, with
but one thought, one ideal--the welfare of that other person. Picture
to yourself what it would be like to live solely to make a great
wrong right, and to save the wrongdoer. Literally, Ellen, she has
borne that man's grief and carried his sorrow, as truly as any
vaunted Saviour of the world. Can you see it?"

"Do you mean--? Is _that_ why she calls it _Bolton_ House? Of course!
And that dreadful old man is-- But, Jim, everybody will find it out."

"You're right," he acknowledged. "But they mustn't find it out just
yet. We must put it off till the man can shake that hang-dog air of
his. Why, he can't even walk decently. Prison is written all over
him. Thank God, she doesn't seem to see it!"

"I'm so glad you told me, Jim," said Ellen gently.

"You won't say a word about this, will you, Ellen?" he asked
anxiously. "I can depend on you?"

"Give me a little credit for decency and common sense," replied
Ellen.

Jim bent over the wheel and kissed her.

Chapter XIX

Rain was falling in torrents, slanting past the windows of the old
parsonage in long gray lines, gurgling up between loosened panes, and
drip-dropping resoundingly in the rusty pan the minister had set
under a broken spot in the ceiling. Upstairs a loosened shutter
banged intermittently under the impact of the wind, which howled
past, to lose itself with great commotion in the tops of the tall
evergreens in t