nd here now. I was just looking about for him when I heard cries
and screams at my back, and, turning, saw several persons all running
one way. As that way was the one by which I had just come, I commenced
running too, and in another moment was one of a crowd collected before
the doctor's door. I mean the great front door which, to my
astonishment, I had already seen was wide open. The sight which there
met my eyes almost paralyzed me.

Stretched on the pavement, spotted with blood, lay the two figures I had
seen within the last five minutes beaming with life and energy. The old
man was dead, the child dying, one little hand outstretched as if in
search of the sympathetic touch which had made the last few hours
perhaps the sweetest of his life. How had it happened? Was it suicide on
the doctor's part or just pure accident? Either way it was horrible,
but--I looked about me; there was a man ready to give explanations. He
had seen it all. The doctor had been racing with the child in the long
hall. He had opened the door, probably for air. A sudden dash of the
child had brought him to the verge, the doctor had plunged to save him,
and losing his balance toppled headlong to the street, carrying the
child with him.

It was all the work of an instant.

One moment two vigorous figures--the next, a mass of crushed humanity!

A sight to stagger a man's soul! But the thought which came with it
staggered me still more.

The force which had been driving Mrs. Ocumpaugh to her fate was removed.
Henceforth her secret was safe if--if I chose to have it so.

XXVI

"HE WILL NEVER FORGIVE"

I was walking away when a man touched me. Some one had seen me come from
the doctor's office a few minutes before. Of course this meant detention
till the coroner should arrive. I quarreled with the circumstances but
felt forced to submit. Happily Jupp now came to the front and I was able
to send him to New York to keep that watch over Mrs. Carew, without
which I could not have rested quiet an hour. One great element of danger
was removed most remarkably, if not providentially, from the path I had
marked out for myself; but there still remained that of this woman's
possible impulses under her great determination to keep Gwendolen in her
own care. But with Jupp to watch the dock, and a man in plain clothes at
the door of the small hotel she was at present bound for, I thought I
might remain in Yonkers contentedly the whole day.

It wa