their faces
to them. One tore out the rags stuffed in a broken place and listened
breathlessly.

Jinny Montaubyn was kneeling down and laying her small old hand on the
muddied forehead. She held it there a second or so and spoke in a voice
whose low clearness brought back at once to Dart the voice in which she
had spoken to the Something upstairs.

"Bet," she said, "Bet." And then more soft still and yet more clear,
"Bet, my dear."

It seemed incredible, but it was a fact. Slowly the lids of the woman's
eyes lifted and the pupils fixed themselves on Jinny Montaubyn, who
leaned still closer and spoke again.

"'T ain't true," she said. "Not this. 'T ain't TRUE. There IS NO
DEATH," slow and soft, but passionately distinct. "THERE--IS--NO--
DEATH."

The muscles of the woman's face twisted it into a rueful smile. The
three words she dragged out were so faint that perhaps none but Dart's
strained ears heard them.

"Wot--price--ME?"

The soul of her was loosening fast and straining away, but Jinny
Montaubyn followed it.

"THERE--IS--NO--DEATH," and her low voice had the tone of a slender
silver trumpet. "In a minit yer 'll know--in a minit. Lord," lifting
her expectant face, "show her the wye."

Mysteriously the clouds were clearing from the sodden face--mysteriously.
Miss Montaubyn watched them as they were swept away! A minute--two
minutes--and they were gone. Then she rose noiselessly and stood
looking down, speaking quite simply as if to herself.

"Ah," she breathed, "she DOES know now--fer sure an' certain."

Then Antony Dart, turning slightly, realized that a man who had entered
the house and been standing near him, breathing with light quickness,
since the moment Miss Montaubyn had knelt, was plainly the person Glad
had called the "curick," and that he had bowed his head and covered his
eyes with a hand which trembled.

IV

He was a young man with an eager soul, and his work in Apple Blossom
Court and places like it had torn him many ways. Religious conventions
established through centuries of custom had not prepared him for life
among the submerged. He had struggled and been appalled, he had wrestled
in prayer and felt himself unanswered, and in repentance of the feeling
had scourged himself with thorns. Miss Montaubyn, returning from the
hospital, had filled him at first with horror and protest.

"But who knows--who knows?" he said to Dart, as they stood and talked
together afterwar