w anything
about it, but he wanted to say that if Mr. Keith didn't find the
business as profitable as he expected, the trustees had determined to
hold the place open for him for one year, and had elected a successor
temporarily to hold it in case he should want to come back.

At this there was a round of approval, as near general applause as that
stolid folk ever indulged in.

Keith spent the next day in taking leave of his friends.

His last visit that evening was to Dr. Balsam. He had not been to the
village often in the evening since Mrs. Yorke and her daughter had left
the place. Now, as he passed up the walk, the summer moonlight was
falling full on the white front of the little hotel. The slanting
moonlight fell on the corner of the verandah where he had talked so
often to Alice Yorke as she lay reclining on her lounge, and where he
had had that last conversation with Mrs. Yorke, and Keith saw a young
man leaning over some one enveloped in white, half reclining in an
arm-chair. He wondered if the same talk were going on that had gone on
there before that evening when Mrs. Yorke had made him look nakedly
at Life.

When Keith stated his errand, the Doctor looked almost as grave as he
could have done had one of his cherished patients refused to respond to
his most careful treatment.

"One thing I want to say to you," he said presently "You have been
eating your heart out of late about something, and it is telling on you.
Give it up. Give that girl up. You will have to sooner or later. They
will prove too strong for you. Even if you do not, she will not suit
you; you will not get the woman you are after. She is an attractive
young girl, but she will not remain so. A few years in fashionable
society will change her. It is the most corroding life on earth!"
exclaimed the Doctor, bitterly. "Convention usurps the place of every
principle, and becomes the only god. She must change. All is Vanity!"
repeated the Doctor, almost in a revery, his eyes resting on
Keith's face.

"Well," he said, with a sigh, "if you ever get knocked down and hurt
badly, come back up here, and I will patch you up if I am living; and if
not, come back anyhow. The place will heal you provided you don't take
drugs. God bless you! Good-by." He walked with Keith to the outer edge
of his little porch and shook hands with him again, and again said,
"Good-by: God bless you!" When Keith turned at the foot of the hill and
looked back, he was just re