eing Mrs. Randall's face bending above her, said
faintly: "It's Stephen! I always knew I should find him somewhere." Then
she sank away again into unconsciousness.

The party for the lakes must be postponed; that was evident. Neither
would it go out under the guidance of Dandy Steve, nor would Mrs.
Wingate go with it; those two things were equally evident.

Which facts, revolving slowly in Old Ben's brain, led him to seat
himself on the shore and abide the course of events. When, about noon,
Mr. Cravath appeared, coming to look after their hastily abandoned
effects, Old Ben touched his hat civilly, and said: "Good-day, sir; I
thought maybe I'd get this job o' guidin' now. Leastways, I'd stay by
yer truck here till somebody come to look it up."

Old Ben was the guide of all others Mr. Cravath would have chosen, next
to Dandy Steve.

"By Jove, Ben," he said, "this is luck! Can you go off with us at once?
Steve has got other business on hand. That lady is his wife, from whom
he has been separated many years."

"So I heerd him say, sir, when he was a-pickin' her up," answered Ben,
composedly, as if such things were a daily occurrence in the
Adirondacks.

"Can you go with us at once?" continued Mr. Cravath.

"In an hour, sir," said Ben.

And in an hour they were off, a bewildered but on the whole a relieved
and happier party than they had been in the morning. Helen Wingate's
long sorrow in the mysterious disappearance of her husband had ennobled
and purified her character, and greatly endeared her to her friends; but
that which had seemed to them to be explainable only by the fact of his
death or his unworthiness she knew was explainable by her own folly and
pride.

The end of the story is best told in Old Ben's words. He was never tired
of telling it.

"I never heered exactly the hull partikelers," he said, "for they'd gone
long before we got back, and the folks she was with wa'n't the kind that
talks much; but I could see they set a store by her. They'd always liked
Steve, too, up here's a guide. They niver know'd him while he was
a-livin' with her, else they'd ha' know'd him here; but he hadn't lived
with her but a mighty little while's near's I could make out. Yer see,
she was powerful rich, an' he hadn't but little; 'n' for all she was so
much in love with him, she couldn't help a-throwin' it up to him, sort
o', an' he couldn't stan' it. So he jest lit out; an' he'd never ha'
gone back to her,--never under