and wells, and
keeps us yet both green in root. Come back, O Love! and freshen me, and,
like a rill, flow down my closing years!"

Duff Salter's shoulder was touched as he ceased to speak, and he found
young Calvin Van de Lear behind him.

"I have followed you out to the country," said the young man, howling in
the elder's ear, "because I wanted to talk to you aloud, as I couldn't
do in Kensington."

Duff Salter drew his storied ivory tablets on the divinity student, and
said, crisply, "Write!"

"No, old man, that's not my style. It's too slow. Besides, it admits of
nothing impressive being said, and I want to convince you."

"Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter. "Young man, if you stun my ear
that way a third time I'll knock you down. I'm deaf, it's true, but I'm
not a hallooing scale to try your lungs on. If you won't write, we can't
talk."

With impatience, yet smiling, Calvin Van de Lear wrote on the tablets,

"Have you seen the ghost?"

"Ghost?"

"Yes, the ghosts of the murdered men!"

"I never saw a ghost of anything in my life. What men?"

"William Zane and Sayler Rainey."

"Who has seen them?"

"Several people. Some say it's but one that has been seen. Zane's ghost
walks, anyway, in Kensington."

"What for?"

"The fishwomen and other superstitious people say, because their
murderers have not been punished."

"And the murderers are--"

"Those who survived and profited by the murder, of course?"

"Jer-ri-choo-woo!" exploded Duff Salter. "Young man," he wrote
deliberately, "you have an idle tongue."

"Friend Salter, you are blind as well as deaf. Do you know Miss Podge
Byerly?"

"No. Do you?"

"She's common! Agnes Wilt uses her as a stool-pigeon. She fetches, and
carries, and flies by night. One of the school directors shoved her on
the public schools for intimate considerations. Perhaps you'll see him
about the house if you look sharp and late some night."

"Jer-rich-co! Jericho!"

Duff Salter was decidedly red in the face, and his grave gray eyes
looked both fierce and convicted. He _had_ seen a school director
visiting the house, but thought it natural enough that he should take a
kind interest in one of the youthful and pretty teachers. The deaf man
returned to his pencil and tablets.

"Do you know, Mr. Van de Lear, that what you are saying is indictable
language? It would have exposed you to death where I have lived."

The young man tossed his head recklessly. Duff Salter