luded a careful matching of Judy's
braid, took up the entire morning; and it was dinner time before he
turned back to the little inn, known as Raleigh's Tavern, at which the
farmers usually stopped for meals. Here, after washing his hands in a
basin on the back porch, he hastily smoothed his hair, and passed into
the small paved court in front of the tavern. As he approached the
doorway, the figure of a young woman in a black dress, which he felt
instinctively did not "belong" to Applegate, came down the short steps,
and paused an instant to caress a large dog that was lying in the
sunshine near the entrance. The next minute, while he fell back, hat in
hand, behind a pile of boxes in the yard, he heard his name called in
a familiar voice, and lifting his eyes found himself face to face with
Molly.

"Abel, aren't you going to speak to me?" she asked, and moving a step
toward him, held out both hands with an impulsive gesture.

As his hand met hers, he withdrew it quickly as though he were stung by
the touch of her soft fingers. Every nerve in his body leaped suddenly
to life, and the moment was so vivid while he faced her, that he
felt half convinced that all the long months since their parting had
dissolved in shadows. The border line between the dream and actuality
was obliterated. It seemed to him not only impossible, but absurd that
he should ever have believed himself engaged to Judy Hatch--that he
should be going to marry her to-morrow! All that side of his life had
no closer relation to his real self than it had to the self of old Adam
Doolittle. While he had planned it he had been a corpse not a living
man, but at the sound of Molly's voice, at the clasp of her fingers,
at the touching, expectant brightness in her eyes, the resurrection had
happened. Judy was a corpse preparing to wed a corpse that had become
alive--and the mating of death with life was abhorrent to him in his
illumination.

"We are on our way to Richmond," explained Molly, very gently, "and we
are waiting to change trains. Oh, Abel, I have wanted so much to see
you!"

It was the old Molly, in truth--Molly in her softest, in her most
dangerous, in her divinest mood. While he gazed at her he could make
no answer because an emotion that was half self-reproach, half furious
longing, choked back his words, and had he opened his lips it would have
been to utter some foolish inarticulate arraignment of destiny. In the
confusion of his senses, he d