untain peaks. Some of us have our heads in the clouds always, up
among the eternal snows. Thunders boom about us, lightning rives us,
storm and sleet beat upon us. There is a rumbling on some distant peak
and we know that it rains there, too. That is all we ever know. We
are not quite sure when our neighbours are happy or when they are
troubled; when there is sun and when there is storm. The secret forces
in the interior of the mountain work on unceasingly. The distance
hides it all. We never get near enough to another peak to see the
scars upon its surface, to know of the dead timber and the dried
streams, the marks of avalanches and glacial drift, the precipices and
pitfalls, the barren wastes. In blue, shimmering distance, the peaks
are veiled and all seem fair but our own."

At the word "veiled," Dexter shuddered. "Very pretty," he said, with a
forced laugh which sounded flat. "Why don't you put it into a sermon?"

Thorpe's face became troubled. "My sermons do not please," he
answered, with touching simplicity. "They say there is not enough of
hell."

"I'm satisfied," commented the Doctor, in a grating voice. "I think
there's plenty of hell."

"You never come to church," remarked the minister, not seeing the point.

"There's hell enough outside--for any reasonable mortal," returned
Dexter. He was keyed to a high pitch. He felt that, at any instant,
something might snap and leave him inert.

Thorpe sighed. His wrinkled old hand strayed out across the papers and
turned the face of Ralph's mother toward him. He studied it closely,
not having seen it before. Then he looked up at the Doctor, whose face
was again like a mask.

"Your--?" A lift of the eyebrows finished the question.

Dexter nodded, with assumed carelessness. There was another long pause.

"Sometimes I envy you," said Thorpe, laying the picture down carefully,
"you have had so much of life and joy. I think it is better for you to
have had her and lost her than not to have had her at all," he
continued, unconsciously paraphrasing. "Even in your loneliness, you
have the comfort of memory, and your boy--I have wondered what a son
might mean to me, now, in my old age. Dead though she is, you know she
still loves you; that somewhere she is waiting to take your hand in
hers."

"Don't!" cried Dexter. The strain was well-nigh insupportable.

"Forgive me, my friend," returned Thorpe, quickly. "I--" Then he
paused. "As I was s