m and then dropped limply into his
weeping wife's arms. "Gone!" he gasped.

Tom Welcome was dead.

Another flash of lightning and a roar of thunder. The two women strove to
revive the corpse. At last the dreadful realization came to them that Tom
Welcome would never speak again. The wind smote the cottage and the light
in the single lamp in the room fluttered as though in mortal terror. The
skies were shattered with a final climactic crash of thunder. The mother
and daughter, alone in that chamber of death, clung to each other
silently feeling themselves isolated from all mankind, with even the
elements storming against them.

While they waited, blanched and terror-stricken, for the last
reverberations of the thunder, the whistle of the Fast Express, bound
from Millville to the great city, rose wildly on the air, like the scream
of an exultant demon, and died away in a series of weird and mocking
echoes into the night.

CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH SOME OF CHICAGO'S BEST PEOPLE
ESSAY A TASK TOO BIG FOR THEM

Lucas Randall inserted his key into the door and let himself into his
Michigan boulevard residence. The butler, busy in one of the reception
rooms, looked up merely to nod a welcome as he entered. Mr. Randall
turned to the mirror in the hallway. He saw the reflection of a man sixty
years of age, gray but well preserved, intelligent but not forceful.

As he turned from the glass he saw his wife descending the broad stairs.
She was small and fragile. In her youth she had had a delicate pink and
gold beauty. The years had worn away the pink and the gold but had left a
spirituality that seemed even finer.

"I'm glad you're home early, Luke dear," he heard her saying. Then
noticing his air of abstraction she added: "Did you forget after all,
Luke?"

"Forget," he repeated blankly, "forget what, Lucy?"

"Oh you man!" replied his wife as if man were a word of reproach. "The
church committee is to be here this afternoon to formulate its report on
vice conditions."

"Oh, that!" Mr. Randall chuckled. "Yes, I had forgotten, but anyhow I
made it, you see. How's Mary?"

"Very well--" Mrs. Randall broke off suddenly. There was a troubled look
in her eyes. Then she added lightly almost to herself: "What a queer
child!"

"Queer?"

"Yes, Luke, queer," returned Mrs. Randall. Again that troubled look.
"Luke, dear, I want to make a confession. I don