r all the wounds that scarred them both in the over-sea
service which had broken them forever.

"A very handsome and distinguished gentleman, your friend Dr.
Curfoot," said the Reverend Mr. Carew. "I imagine his practice in New
York is not only fashionable but extensive."

"Both," said Brandes.

"I assume so. He seems to be intimately acquainted with people whose
names for generations have figured prominently in the social columns
of the New York press."

"Oh, yes, Curfoot and Quint know them all."

Which was true enough. They had to. One must know people from whom one
accepts promissory notes to liquidate those little affairs peculiar to
the temple of chance. And New York's best furnished the neophytes for
these rites.

"I thought Captain Quint very interesting," ventured Ruhannah. "He
seems to have sailed over the entire globe."

"Naval men are always delightful," said her mother. And, laying her
hand on her husband's arm in the dark: "Do you remember, Wilbour, how
kind the officers from the cruiser _Oneida_ were when the rescue party
took us aboard?"

"God sent the _Oneida_ to us," said her husband dreamily. "I thought
it was the end of the world for us--for you and me and baby Rue--that
dreadful flight from the mission to the sea."

His bony fingers tightened over his wife's toilworn hand. In the long
grass along the creek fireflies sparkled, and their elfin lanterns,
waning, glowing, drifted high in the calm August night.

The Reverend Mr. Carew gathered his crutches; the night was a trifle
damp for him; besides, he desired to read. Brandes, as always, rose to
aid him. His wife followed.

"Don't stay out long, Rue," she said in the doorway.

"No, mother."

Brandes came back. Departing from his custom, he did not light a
cigar, but sat in silence, his narrow eyes trying to see Ruhannah in
the darkness. But she was only a delicate shadow shape to him,
scarcely detached from the darkness that enveloped her.

He meant to speak to her then. And suddenly found he could not,
realised, all at once, that he lacked the courage.

This was the more amazing and disturbing to him because he could not
remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech had ever
failed him.

He had never foreseen such a situation; it had never occurred to him
that he would find the slightest difficulty in saying easily and
gracefully what he had determined to say to this young girl.

Now he sat there silent, distur