nd."

He took up his hat and went out cheerily, and Miss Custer turned her
face to the wall and cried. For a day or two she was worse: then she
grew better, and was finally able to sit up. At the expiration of two
weeks Ruth came back. She was very pale and her face had a rigid look.
Miss Custer met her sweetly, being still under the subduing influence of
invalidism, and Ruth tried to feel kindly to her; which was a great
vexation to Mrs. Tascher.

"Let me alone," said Ruth passionately one day. "Don't you see how I
hate her? I could almost kill her! I am trying to fight down the demon
in me."

The doctor, who had himself grown thin and haggard-looking, welcomed
Ruth back with an air of constraint.

One day the young folks of the village got up a picnic and invited Aunt
Ruby's boarders. The doctor at first hesitated about giving his
permission for Miss Custer to go, but she coaxed, and he finally
consented. The evening before the picnic Ruth requested an interview
with the doctor, and they walked out into the grove. She told him she
wished to release him from his engagement, and it was a painful
satisfaction to her to see the agony that was in his face. He accused
himself bitterly--said he had broken up her happiness and ruined her
life, that he could never forgive himself, and ended by refusing to
accept his release, and declaring that he should never avail himself of
any of the advantages it offered.

The next morning he went to Bruce with white face and strained eyes,
and begged him, for the love he bore him, to take Miss Custer to the
picnic and to stay by her.

"So, my boy," said Bruce, not a little affected, "you have got into the
ditch and want me to help you out? Well, I will do what I can.--Thank
the Lord, his eyes are opened at last!" he muttered as Ebling went away.

The picnic-ground was a wooded hillside that sloped down into a grassy
meadow a mile from town. The company all got together at the appointed
hour--two in the afternoon--in the street below Aunt Ruby's, and waited
for her boarders to come out. Ruth had persuaded Mrs. Tascher to go, and
the doctor, with a painful attempt to appear natural, kept beside her
and was scrupulously attentive to her comfort. Ruth playfully claimed
Hugh as her escort. Bruce, true to agreement, monopolized Miss Custer in
a masterly way, much to her surprise. She tried to snub him at first,
but he ignored all her efforts in that direction with consummate
stupidity,