lowered voices.

Glad stared at the curate. For the first time she looked disturbed and
alarmed.

"Blimme," she ejaculated, "'e's gone off 'is nut, pore chap!--'e's
gone off it!"

"No," the man answered, "you shall come to me"--he hesitated a second
while a shade passed over his eyes--"TO-MORROW. And you shall see."

He rose quietly to his feet and the curate rose also. Abnormal as the
climax was, it was to be seen that there was no mistake about the
revelation. The man was a creature of authority and used to carrying
conviction by his unsupported word. That made itself, by some clear,
unspoken method, plain.

"You are Sir Oliver Holt! And a few hours ago you were on the point
of--"

"Ending it all--in an obscure lodging. Afterward the earth would have
been shovelled on to a work-house coffin. It was an awful thing." He
shook off a passionate shudder. "There was no wealth on earth that could
give me a moment's ease--sleep--hope--life. The whole world was full
of things I loathed the sight and thought of. The doctors said my
condition was physical. Perhaps it was--perhaps to-day has strangely
given a healthful jolt to my nerves--perhaps I have been dragged away
from the agony of morbidity and plunged into new intense emotions which
have saved me from the last thing and the worst--SAVED me!"

He stopped suddenly and his face flushed, and then quite slowly turned
pale.

"SAVED ME!" he repeated the words as the curate saw the awed blood
creepingly recede. "Who knows, who knows! How many explanations one is
ready to give before one thinks of what we say we believe. Perhaps it
was--the Answer!"

The curate bowed his head reverently.

"Perhaps it was."

The girl Glad sat clinging to her knees, her eyes wide and awed and with
a sudden gush of hysteric tears rushing down her cheeks.

"That's the wye! That's the wye!" she gulped out. "No one won't
never believe--they won't, NEVER. That's what she sees, Miss Montaubyn.
You don't, 'E don't," with a jerk toward the curate. "I ain't nothin'
but ME, but blimme if I don't--blimme!"

Sir Oliver Holt grew paler still. He felt as he had done when Jinny
Montaubyn's poor dress swept against him. His voice shook when he
spoke.

"So do I," he said with a sudden deep catch of the breath; "it was the
Answer."

In a few moments more he went to the girl Polly and laid a hand on her
shoulder.

"I shall take you home to your mother," he said. "I shall take