the driving of the man's curiously
haunted mind. He had declared his intention of going away. Where?
Definite information had been withheld. He was going to devote himself
to some purpose he claimed to have always lain at the back of his mind.
What was that purpose? Again there had been no information forthcoming.
Was it good, or--bad? The man who was endeavouring to solve the riddle
of it all dared not trust himself to a decision. He felt that his
friend's unstable soul might drive him in almost any direction after the
shock it had sustained.

No. Speculation was useless. The crude facts were like a brick wall he
had to face. Standing's wealth and the great mill at Sachigo were left
to his administration with the trusting confidence of a child. The
responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung
upon his shoulders. And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his
worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any
possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and
all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the
unexplored forests of Northern Quebec. The whole thing was
mad--utterly--

The muffled electric bell on his table drubbed out its summons. One
swift glance at the clock and the lawyer yielded to professional
instinct. He became absorbed in the papers neatly spread out on his
table as a bespectacled clerk thrust open the door.

"Miss McDonald to see you," he announced, in the modulated tone which
was part of his professional make-up.

The lawyer rose at once. He moved toward the door with a smiling
welcome. The sex and personality of his visitor demanded this departure
from his custom.

Nancy McDonald stood just inside the doorway through which the clerk had
departed. She was tall, beautifully tall, for all she was only sixteen.
In her simple college girl's overcoat, with its muffling of fur about
the neck, it was impossible to detect the graces of the youthful figure
concealed. Her carriage was upright, and her bearing full of that
confidence which is so earnestly taught in the schools of the newer
countries.

But these things passed unnoticed by the white-haired lawyer. He was
smiling into the radiant face under the low-pressed fur cap. It was the
wide, hazel eyes, so deeply fringed with a wealth of curling, dark
lashes, that inspired his smiling interest. It was the level brows, so
delicately pencilled, and dark as were t