s now beside him looking up into the doctor's eyes. It was
not the first time that he had seen his master's face grow suddenly
serious as he had read the tell-tale slate or had opened some note
awaiting his arrival.

Doctor John lowered the lamp, stepped noiselessly to the foot of the
winding stairs that led to the sleeping rooms above--the dog close at
his heels, watching his every movement--and called gently:

"Mother! mother, dear!" He never left his office when she was at home
and awake without telling her where he was going.

No one answered.

"She is asleep. I will slip out without waking her. Stay where you are,
Rex--I will be back some time before daylight," and throwing his
night-cloak about his shoulders, he started for his gig.

The dog stopped with his paws resting on the outer edge of the top step
of the porch, the line he was not to pass, and looked wistfully after
the doctor. His loneliness was to continue, and his poor master to go
out into the night alone. His tail ceased to wag, only his eyes moved.

Once outside Doctor John patted the mare's neck as if in apology and
loosened the reins. "Come, old girl," he said; "I'm sorry, but it can't
be helped," and springing into the gig, he walked the mare clear of the
gravel beyond the gate, so as not to rouse his mother, touched her
lightly with the whip, and sent her spinning along the road on the way
to Fogarty's.

The route led toward the sea, branching off within the sight of the
cottage porch, past the low, conical ice-houses used by the fishermen
in which to cool their fish during the hot weather, along the
sand-dunes, and down a steep grade to the shore. The tide was making
flood, and the crawling surf spent itself in long shelving reaches of
foam. These so packed the sand that the wheels of the gig hardly made
an impression upon it. Along this smooth surface the mare trotted
briskly, her nimble feet wet with the farthest reaches of the incoming
wash.

As he approached the old House of Refuge, black in the moonlight and
looking twice its size in the stretch of the endless beach, he noticed
for the hundredth time how like a crouching woman it appeared, with its
hipped roof hunched up like a shoulder close propped against the dune
and its overhanging eaves but a draped hood shading its thoughtful
brow; an illusion which vanished when its square form, with its wide
door and long platform pointing to the sea, came into view.

More than once in it