other career for me. These are the
people I love. I will never raise between them and me so odious a
barrier as the story of my disappearance would be. They could never
take to Horace Endicott. Oh, I have given the matter a moment's thought,
Monsignor. The more I dwell on it, the worse it seems."

He considered the point for a moment, and then whispered with joyous
triumph, "I have succeeded beyond my own expectations. I have
disappeared even from myself. An enemy cannot find me, not even my own
confession would reveal me. The people who love me would swear to a man
that I am Arthur Dillon, and that only insanity could explain my own
confession. At the very least they would raise such a doubt in the mind
of a judge that he would insist on clean proofs from both sides. But
there's the clear fact. I have escaped from myself, disappeared from the
sight of Arthur Dillon. Before long I can safely testify to a dream I
had of having once been a wretch named Horace Endicott. But I have a
doubt even now that I was such a man."

"My God, but it's weird," said Monsignor with emotion, as he rose to
walk the room. "I have the same notion myself at times."

"It's a matter to be left undisturbed, or some one will go crazy over
it," Arthur said seriously.

"And you are happy, really happy? The sight of this woman did not revive
in you any regret...."

"I am happy, Monsignor, beyond belief," with a contented sigh. "It would
be too much to expect perfect happiness. Yet that is within my reach. If
I were only free to marry Honora Ledwith."

"I heard of that too," said the priest meditatively. "Has she any regard
for you?"

"As a brother. How could I have asked any other love? And I am rich in
that. Since there is no divorce for Catholics, I could not let her see
the love which burned in me. I had no hope."

"And she goes into the convent, I believe. You must not stand in God's
way."

"I have not, though I delayed her going because I could not bear to part
from her. Willingly I have resigned her to God, because I know that in
His goodness, had I been free, He would have given her to me."

Monsignor paused as if struck by the thought and looked at him for a
moment.

"It is the right spirit," was his brief comment.

He loved this strange, incomprehensible man, who had stood for five
years between his adopted people and their enemies in many a fight, who
had sought battle in their behalf and heaped them with favors. His eyes
s