, clear voice of the child rang through the trees, stealing the
stricken heart away from the lure of the river:

"Will you come back home, where the young larks are singin'?
The door is open wide, and the bells of Lynn are ringin';
There's a little lake I know,
And a boat you used to row
To the shore beyond that's quiet--will you come back home?

"Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin',
Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin';
Here's the luck o' Heaven to you,
Here's the hand of love will brew you
The cup of peace--ah, darlin', will you come back home?"

She stood listening for a few moments, and, under the spell of the fresh,
young voice, the homely, heart-searching words, and the intimate sweetness
of the woods, the despairing apathy lifted slowly away. She started
forward again with a new understanding, her footsteps quickened. She would
go to Father Bourassa. He would understand. She would tell him all. He
would help her to do what now she knew she must do, ask Leonard Varley to
save her husband's life--Leonard Varley to save her husband's life!

When she stepped upon the veranda of the priest's house, she did not know
that Varley was inside. She had no time to think. She was ushered into the
room where he was, with the confusing fact of his presence fresh upon her.
She had had but a word or two with the priest, but enough for him to know
what she meant to do, and that it must be done at once.

Varley advanced to meet her. She shuddered inwardly to think what a
difference there was between the fallen creature she had left behind in
the hospital and this tall, dark, self-contained man, whose name was
familiar in the surgeries of Europe, who had climbed from being the son of
a clockmaker to his present distinguished place.

"Have you come for absolution, also?" he asked, with a smile; "or is it to
get a bill of excommunication against your only enemy--there couldn't be
more than one?"

Cheerful as his words were, he was shrewdly observing her, for her
paleness and the strange light in her eyes gave him a sense of anxiety. He
wondered what trouble was on her.

"Excommunication?" he repeated.

The unintended truth went home. She winced, even as she responded with
that quaint note in her voice which gave humor to her speech. "Yes,
excommunication," she replied; "but why an enemy? Do we not need to
excommunicate our friends sometimes