pan of boiling fat and pouring
it over his head."

Anne laughed over Miss Cornelia's wrath as she sped through the
darkness. But laughter accorded ill with that night. She was sober
enough when she reached the house among the willows. Everything was
very silent. The front part of the house seemed dark and deserted, so
Anne slipped round to the side door, which opened from the veranda into
a little sitting room. There she halted noiselessly.

The door was open. Beyond, in the dimly lighted room, sat Leslie
Moore, with her arms flung out on the table and her head bent upon
them. She was weeping horribly--with low, fierce, choking sobs, as if
some agony in her soul were trying to tear itself out. An old black
dog was sitting by her, his nose resting on his lap, his big doggish
eyes full of mute, imploring sympathy and devotion. Anne drew back in
dismay. She felt that she could not intermeddle with this bitterness.
Her heart ached with a sympathy she might not utter. To go in now
would be to shut the door forever on any possible help or friendship.
Some instinct warned Anne that the proud, bitter girl would never
forgive the one who thus surprised her in her abandonment of despair.

Anne slipped noiselessly from the veranda and found her way across the
yard. Beyond, she heard voices in the gloom and saw the dim glow of a
light. At the gate she met two men--Captain Jim with a lantern, and
another who she knew must be Dick Moore--a big man, badly gone to fat,
with a broad, round, red face, and vacant eyes. Even in the dull light
Anne got the impression that there was something unusual about his eyes.

"Is this you, Mistress Blythe?" said Captain Jim. "Now, now, you
hadn't oughter be roaming about alone on a night like this. You could
get lost in this fog easier than not. Jest you wait till I see Dick
safe inside the door and I'll come back and light you over the fields.
I ain't going to have Dr. Blythe coming home and finding that you
walked clean over Cape Leforce in the fog. A woman did that once,
forty years ago.

"So you've been over to see Leslie," he said, when he rejoined her.

"I didn't go in," said Anne, and told what she had seen. Captain Jim
sighed.

"Poor, poor, little girl! She don't cry often, Mistress Blythe--she's
too brave for that. She must feel terrible when she does cry. A night
like this is hard on poor women who have sorrows. There's something
about it that kinder brings up