train stopped, and only one stranger emerged upon the
crushed-stone platform, Conscience thought that their guest had missed
his train. Sam Haymond, D.D., in turn, seeing no elderly gentleman of
sober visage, inferred that his host had failed to meet him. There was
only a young woman standing alone by a baggage truck and for an instant
the thoughts of the minister were fully occupied with the consideration
of her arrestingly vivid beauty: a beauty of youth and slender litheness
and exquisite color.

Then their glances met and the girl moved forward. It flashed
simultaneously upon both of them that faulty preconceptions had caused a
failure of recognition.

The tall, young man, whose breadth of shoulder and elasticity of step
might have been a boy's, spoke first with an amused riffle in his eyes.

"My name is Sam Haymond. Are you, by any chance, Mr. Tollman's
daughter?"

Under the challenge of his humorous twinkle, a sudden mischief flashed
into Conscience's face. She was tempted to announce herself as William
Williams' daughter and let it go at that, but with a swift
reconsideration she laughed and told the whole truth.

"I am Mr. Tollman's wife."

The minister raised his brows in surprise. "Now I don't know why I
pictured Mrs. Tollman as a delightful but maternal lady with a gift for
mince pies--yet I did."

"I'm afraid I'm below par on my mince pies," she confessed with a
mockery of humiliation. He could not, of course, know that the youth in
her was leaping up to his bait of spontaneity as a trout leaps to the
fly when flies are few. Conscience went on: "But you're below par,
too--on ecclesiastical solemnity. I expected a grave-faced parson--"

Sam Haymond's laughter pealed out with a heartiness which seemed gauged
to outdoor spaces rather than to confining walls.

"I haven't always been a minister," he acknowledged as he put down his
suit-case. There was in his whole appearance an impression of physical
confidence and fitness, which made Conscience's thoughts revert to
Stuart Farquaharson.

"Once I preached a very bad sermon in a log meeting-house in the
Cumberland mountains," he went on. "It is a country chiefly notable for
feuds and moon-shining. I was introduced by a gentleman whose avocations
were varied. He explained them to me in these words, 'I farms some; I
jails some an' I gospels some.' Perhaps I'm cut to a similar pattern."

For both of them the drive proved short. Like a brook which has bee