er make or mar my
future."

"Is it so bad as that?" returned the old gentleman with assumed
innocence.

"You could never imagine what it is that I wish to ask," continued the
young man.

"I might guess, perhaps," laughed the doctor, with a roguish twinkle in
his eye.

"Surely you--you couldn't have noticed the one great wish of my heart,"
gasped Kendal. "I--"

At that moment the expected visitor was announced.

"Come and see me in my library this evening," said Doctor Bryan,
grasping the young man's hand, "and we will talk over the matter you
have so much at heart, and I will give you my answer in regard to it."

"You are too good, sir," cried Kendal, in bewilderment.

At that moment the entrance of the visitor put a stop to all further
conversation, and Kendal arose and took his leave after an exchange of
greetings.

"How could he possibly have divined that I was thinking of asking him
for money?" he pondered.

He heard Dorothy singing at the top of her voice in the drawing-room,
and he turned on his heel in the hallway, and walked in an opposite
direction with a frown of impatience on his face.

Dorothy saw him pass the door, and she bit her lip with vexation.

"Of course he heard me playing on the piano, for I thumped as loud as
ever I could; but he did not come in. It seems to me he is trying 'to
cool off,' as we girls in the bindery used to say."

Dorothy tiptoed over to the window as she heard the front door slam
after him, and if he had looked back he would have seen a very defiant
though tear-stained face peering earnestly after him from behind the
lace curtains.

Kendal walked disconsolately enough through the spacious grounds and out
into the main road, little dreaming that a strange fate was drawing him
onward with each step he took.

He had traveled a mile or more over the country road, when suddenly he
was startled by the sound of horses' hoofs.

The next instant, from around the bend in the road, a horse dashed
riderless, covered with foam, and so near him that he had to spring
aside or its hoofs would have been buried in his brain. One glance, and
a cry of horror broke from his lips. It was Doctor Bryan's horse.

Great God! where was he? Kendal realized that there had been a terrible
accident, and that at that moment the doctor lay dying--perhaps dead--by
the road-side.

In all haste he rushed down the road in the direction whence the horse
had come, and around the first bend he b