ust be either half mad or a man with some hidden crime on
his soul. He was a tall man with a drawn face and crooked shoulders and
the name he always entered on hotel registers was, "Archibald Craven,
Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire, England."

He had traveled far and wide since the day he saw Mistress Mary in his
study and told her she might have her "bit of earth." He had been in the
most beautiful places in Europe, though he had remained nowhere more
than a few days. He had chosen the quietest and remotest spots. He had
been on the tops of mountains whose heads were in the clouds and had
looked down on other mountains when the sun rose and touched them with
such light as made it seem as if the world were just being born.

But the light had never seemed to touch himself until one day when he
realized that for the first time in ten years a strange thing had
happened. He was in a wonderful valley in the Austrian Tyrol and he had
been walking alone through such beauty as might have lifted any man's
soul out of shadow. He had walked a long way and it had not lifted his.
But at last he had felt tired and had thrown himself down to rest on a
carpet of moss by a stream. It was a clear little stream which ran quite
merrily along on its narrow way through the luscious damp greenness.
Sometimes it made a sound rather like very low laughter as it bubbled
over and round stones. He saw birds come and dip their heads to drink in
it and then flick their wings and fly away. It seemed like a thing alive
and yet its tiny voice made the stillness seem deeper. The valley was
very, very still.

As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water, Archibald Craven
gradually felt his mind and body both grow quiet, as quiet as the valley
itself. He wondered if he were going to sleep, but he was not. He sat
and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes began to see things growing
at its edge. There was one lovely mass of blue forget-me-nots growing so
close to the stream that its leaves were wet and at these he found
himself looking as he remembered he had looked at such things years ago.
He was actually thinking tenderly how lovely it was and what wonders of
blue its hundreds of little blossoms were. He did not know that just
that simple thought was slowly filling his mind--filling and filling it
until other things were softly pushed aside. It was as if a sweet clear
spring had begun to rise in a stagnant pool and had risen and risen
until at