s it not natural that
I should suffer now? Does not your religion tell you that it is right?
Answer me that?"

Uniacke hesitated. A conviction had been growing up in him all the
evening that his guest was suffering severely under some nervous
affliction; one of those obscure diseases which change the whole colour
of life to the sufferer, which distort all actions however simple and
ordinary, which render diminutive trials monstrous, and small evils
immense and ineffably tragic. It seemed to Uniacke to be his duty to
combat Sir Graham's increasing melancholy, which actually bordered upon
despair. At the same time, the young clergyman could not hide from his
mind--a mind flooded with conscience--that the painter was slightly to
blame for the action which had been followed by so strange a result.

"I see you hesitate, Uniacke," said Sir Graham. "Ah, you agree with
me!"

"No; I think you may have been careless. But you magnify a slight error
into a grievous sin; and I do indeed believe that it must be your
present bad state of health which acts as the magnifying glass. That is
my honest opinion."

"No, no," said the painter, almost with anger, "my illness is all from
the mind. If I could find that boy, if I could give him back to his
mother, I should recover my peace, I should recover my health--I should
no longer be haunted, driven as I am now. But, Uniacke, do you know what
it is that I fear most of all, what it is that dogs me, night and day;
though I strive to put it from me, to tell myself that it is a chimera?"

"What?"

"The belief that little Jack is dead; that he has been drowned at sea,
perhaps lately, perhaps long ago."

"Why should you think that? You do not even know for certain that he ran
away to sea."

"I am sure of it. If he is dead! If he is dead!"

The painter, as if in an access of grief, turned abruptly from the fire,
walked over to the window, pulled one of the blowing curtains aside and
approached his face to the glass.

"In spite of the storm it is still so light that I can see those
graves," he said in a low voice.

"Don't look at them, Sir Graham. Let us talk of other things."

"And--and--yes, Uniacke, that poor, mad Skipper is still out there,
lingering among them. He is by the churchyard wall, where you were
standing this evening in the twilight: one would say he was watching."

The clergyman had also risen from his seat. He moved a step or two
across the little room, then stood