n, merrily,
making the crossing with the light foot that a light heart gives.

"It makes life possible," replied a pale young girl beside her, coming
slowly after.

"Poor fellow!" sighed a stranger whom I hit in hurrying on. "It was an
ugly way to die. Nice air, this morning!"

"He will be a loss to the community," replied this man's companion.
"There isn't a doctor in town who has his luck with fevers. You can't
convince my wife he didn't save her life last winter. Frost, last
night, wasn't there? Very invigorating morning!"

Now, at the head of the street some ladies were standing, waiting for a
car. I was delayed in passing them, and as I stepped back to change my
course I saw that one of them was speaking earnestly, and that her eyes
showed signs of weeping.

"He wouldn't remember me," she said; "it was eleven years ago. But
sick women don't forget their doctors. He was as _kind_ to me"--

"Oh, _poor_ Mrs. Thorne!" a soft voice answered, in the accented tone
of an impulsive, tender-hearted woman. "It's bad enough to be a
patient. But, oh, his _wife_!"

"Let me pass, ladies!" I cried, or tried to cry, forgetting, in the
anguish which their words fanned to its fiercest, that I could not be
heard and might not be seen. "There seems to be some obstruction. Let
me by, for I am in mortal haste!"

Obstruction there was, alas! but it was not in them whom I would have
entreated. Obstruction there was, but of what nature I could not and I
cannot testify. While I had the words upon my lips, even as the group
of women broke and left a space about me while they scattered on their
ways, there on the corner of the thoroughfare, in the heart of the
town, by an invisible force, by an inexplicable barrier, I, the dead
man fleeing to my living wife, was beaten back.

Whence came that awful order? How came it? And wherefore? I knew no
more than the November wind that passed me by, and went upon its errand
as it listed.

I was thrust back by a blast of Power Incalculable; it was like the
current of an unknown natural force of infinite capability. Set the
will of soul and body as I would, I could not pass the head of the
street.

CHAPTER IX.

Struggling to bear the fate which I had met, I turned as manfully as I
might, and retraced my steps down the thronging street, within whose
limits I now learned that my freedom was confined. It was a sickening
discovery. I had been a man of will so developed