e of loneliness as unpleasant as
it was unexpected, and found himself longing to get back to a certain
pair of arms whose hold was a panacea for every ache.

"He thinks he owes it all to me," he was saying by and by, when this
desirable condition had been fulfilled. "But maybe I don't owe something
to him. If the sight of a plucky fight for self-control is a bracing
tonic to any man I've had one in watching him. I never saw a finer
display of will against heavy odds. Another man in the shape he was in
last spring would have gone under."

"It would be pretty difficult, I think, dear," said his wife, softly
touching his thick locks, as his head lay on her lap, "for any man to go
under with you pulling him out."

"I didn't pull him out. No man in creation can pull another out, no
matter how strong his effort. The chap that's in the current has got to
do every last ounce of the pulling himself. I don't say God can't help,
for I'm positive He can, but I don't think a man can do much. And it's my
belief that even God helps chiefly through making the man realize that he
can help himself."

"For which office he sometimes appoints a man as his human instrument,
doesn't he?"

Burns turned his head and touched his lips to the hand which had laid
itself against his cheek.

"Perhaps, when he can't find a woman. As a power conductor she is the
only, original, copper wire!"

* * * * *

The curiosity which James Macauley had freely expressed as to the
probable degree of friendship between Leaver and Amy Mathewson, developed
by months of close association, was, with him and with others, not
unnatural. But, in Ellen's case, the desire to know just how much the
situation had meant to Amy herself, was a result of her increasingly
warm affection for a young woman of character and personal
attractiveness, mingled with a sense of her own and her husband's
responsibility in bringing together two people who might be expected
to emerge from the encounter not a little affected by it.

On the morning after John Leaver's departure, Ellen, standing at a
window, found herself watching with more than ordinary intentness the
face of Amy as she came up the walk to the house. Lest Leaver should
realize to what an extent his presence had disturbed the regular routine
of Burns's office, Amy had not been allowed to resume her position
according to the old regime, but had spent only a portion of her time
there, more