an? he asked himself again and again, while suspicions
taunted him almost to madness. Up and down that disordered garden he
paced like a ghostly sentinel; the doves fluttered to and fro, and
were dismayed; the night-winds came in from the chilly sea, and the
dews gathered in his beard. Through the deepening dusk he beheld the
lights of the little town below him: across the solemn silence floated
the clear notes of the vesper-bell. Jason turned toward the tower on
the headland. A single ray of light stealing from one of the high,
narrow windows shot through the mist toward heaven. "The ladder
of Jacob's dream," said Jason: "on it the angels are ascending and
descending in their visitations. Oh that I, like Jacob, might receive
intelligence from these!"

With the heaviest heart that ever burdened man he returned to the town
and entered the open doors of the church, seeking a few moments of
repose. An alien in his own land and unwelcomed of any, Jason sought
the good priest and learned the fate of Maud. She was dead to the
world and to him. It was but the realization of his fears, and he
was in some measure prepared for it; yet the best part of the man was
killed with the force of that blow. His only hope was gone. He set
his house in order, like one about to leave it, never to return:
his golden fleece was made over to enrich the convent, and, as the
magnanimous offering of a homelesss and nameless voyager, it delights
the happy creatures within those walls, and the shrine of the Virgin
was made more wonderfully beautiful than it is possible to conceive.

That night Jason walked in the shadow of the lofty walls and poured
out his sorrowful prayers upon the winds that swept about them. Once
in his agony he beat at the massive gates, demanding in the name of
God and of mercy admittance for a lost soul that had no shelter save
under that roof, and no salvation away from it; but his bleeding hands
made no impression upon the ponderous doors, and the silent inmates
at prayer heard nothing save their own whispers, or dreamed in their
cells of heaven and of peace.

So the cry of that hopeless soul rang up to the stars unanswered, and
the night frowned down upon him with impenetrable darkness.

End of the tragedy of Jason's Quest, which might easily have been a
pleasant comedy if Maud had only spoken her mind in the right place.
Will women never learn--since God has given them the same instincts
with man, to love, to trust, t