to take her
away. He answered, tenderly:

"We can; each one can live his own life as a stranger to his
shipmates. You have done so."

"It means a sacrifice. Some one must lift us. From some other life we
could get the strength, and that other one loses--just so much as he
gives."

Thornton's brows contracted. She read the comment of reason that ran
beside his text.

"Who knows? Everything can't be weighed in scales."

She did not ask him if he would return; she knew in her heart that he
would.

VI

Certain natural results followed from Jarvis Thornton's first
interference in the Ellwell family troubles. He felt bound to do what
he could with the Minnesota uncle to secure some kind of a berth for
young Roper. In a few weeks he was able to make another journey to the
Four Corners, with the definite offer of a small agency in a little
frontier town. He found the family conditions troubled, but
temporarily quiet. Old Ellwell, after a passionate and violent attack,
had lapsed into a glum silence. The son kept out of his way; hung
about the premises during the day-time, and took himself off as often
as the mother and sisters could find money for him to spend. After
several visits to the Four Corners, in such times of family stress,
Thornton found himself on the most intimate terms with the young woman
who seemed to realize the suffering most.

He made up his mind that, come what might, he should, in justice to
his father, tell him the story. Thornton's father was an elderly man
whom most good Boston people were glad to know. He had a little
fortune; he owned a comfortable little brick box on Marlboro' Street;
he had cultivated enough tastes to keep him reasonably occupied ever
since his wife's sudden death years ago. Jarvis Thornton enjoyed his
father, and the enjoyment was reciprocal. The two had put their heads
together and planned out the younger man's life-work, and each felt an
equal interest and responsibility for the success of their
speculation. What the father's career had lacked in effectiveness,
they now determined should be supplied by Jarvis. So the son felt
already some compunctions when he realized how far he had gone in this
important matter without putting his father in the way of criticizing
it.

It was a stifling July evening that Jarvis took to open the matter to
his father. The old man had been unusually silent, almost preoccupied
during the dinner they had eaten together in the lit