(she was becoming
vehement), 'there isn't the slightest atom of use in your caring for
me.'

'Isn't there?' asked the Baby despairingly. 'I wish you would say that
you will think over it, Miss Johns; I wish you would say that I might
know you and come and see you sometimes. I'd cut the Syndicate and make
it up with your uncle.'

'It wouldn't be the slightest use,' she repeated excitedly.

'Of course if you go on saying that, I sha'n't bore you any more, but
do, Miss Johns, do, do just think a minute before you say it again.'

A note in his voice touched her at last; she paused for the required
minute and then answered gently; her gentleness carried conviction. 'I
could never care for you. You are not at all the sort of man I could
ever care for, and I am going back to New York in a few days, so you
won't be troubled by seeing me any more.'

When Helen rushed breathless to the door of the Syndicate boat-house and
told of the accident, the bachelors went out in a body and bore the Baby
home.

They petted him until he was on his feet again. They gained some vague
knowledge of his interview with Helen, and he kept a very distinct
remembrance of it. Both he and they believed that his first attempt at
love had come to nothing, but that was a mistake.

The Baby had loved with some genuine fervour, and his grief made a man
of him.

VIII

WITCHCRAFT

A young minister was walking through the streets of a small town in the
island of Cape Breton. The minister was only a theological student who
had been sent to preach in this remote place during his summer holiday.
The town was at once very primitive and very modern. Many log-houses
still remained in it; almost all the other houses were built of wood.
The little churches, which represented as many sects, looked like the
churches in a child's Dutch village. The town hall had only a brick
facing. On the hillsides that surrounded the town far and wide were many
fields, in which the first stumps were still standing, charred by the
fires that had been kindled to kill them. There were also patches of
forest still to be seen among these fields, where the land had not yet
been cleared. In spite of all this, the town was very advanced, every
improvement being of the newest kind because so recently achieved. Upon
huge ungainly tree-trunks roughly erected along the streets, electric
lamps hung, and telephone wires crossed and recrossed one another from
roof to roof. Ther