e had been a fool, he thought,
to come back and hang about the old place for the pleasure of hearing
his father talked of, and of touching the things he had handled a day
or two before. Growing into middle age, Hugh Guinness's likeness to
his father had increased year by year. The two men were simple as boys
in some respects, and would have been satisfied alone together. The
younger man halted now on the foot-bridge which crossed the creek,
looking out the different hollows where his father had taken him to
fish when he was a boy, and thinking of their life then. "But his wife
and mine would have to be put into the scales now," with an attempt at
whistling which died out discordantly.

There was one person to whom the shameful confession of his marriage
must be made--Miss Muller. That was the result, he thought, of his
absurd whim of loitering about Berry town. When he had met Maria
Muller before, he had no reason to think she cared a doit whether he
was married or single. Now--McCall's color changed, alone as he was,
with shame and annoyance. With all his experience of life and of
women, he had as little self-confidence as an awkward girl. But Maria
had left him no room for doubt.

"It would be the right thing to do. I ought to tell her. But it will
be a slight matter to her, no doubt."

If he had been a single man, in all probability he would have asked
Maria Muller to marry him that day. He was a susceptible fellow, with
a man's ordinary vanity and passions; and Maria's bright sweet face,
their loiterings along shady lanes and under Bourbon roses, the
perpetual deference she paid to his stupendous intellect, had had due
effect. He was not the man to see a strong, beautiful woman turn pale
and tremble at his touch, and preserve his phlegm.

He threw away his cigar, and jumped the fence into the Water-cure
grounds. "I'll tell her now, and then be off from old Berry town for
ever."

Miss Muller was standing in the porch. She leaned over the railing,
looking at the ragged rain-clouds driven swiftly over the blue
distance, and at the wet cornfields and clumps of bay bushes gray with
berries which filled the damp air with their pungent smell. Her dog,
a little black-and-tan terrier, bit at her skirt. She had just been
lecturing to her three students on the vertebrae, and when she
took him up could not help fumbling over his bones, even while she
perceived the color and scent of the morning. They gave her so keen a
p