ell it from beginning to end to the
true heart. I could not shock Louis, the dear innocent, and it was
necessary to keep most of it from my mother, for legal reasons.
Monsignor has heard the greater part, but not all. And I have been like
the Ancient Mariner.

Since then at an uncertain hour
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
The heart within me burns.

* * * * *

That moment that his face I see
I know the man that must hear me;
To him my tale I teach."

"I am the man," said she, "with a woman's curiosity. How can I help but
listen?"

He holds him with his glittering eye--
The wedding-guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The mariner hath his will.

The wedding-guest sat on a stone,
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
That bright-eyed mariner.

"Do you remember how we read and re-read it on the _Arrow_ years ago?
Somehow it has rung in my ears ever since, Honora. My life had a horror
like it. Had it not passed I could not speak of it even to you. Long ago
I was an innocent fool whom men knew in the neighborhood of Cambridge as
Horace Endicott. I was an orphan, without guides, or real friends. I
felt no need of them, for was I not rich, and happily married? Good
nature and luck had carried me along lazily like that pine-stick
floating down there. What a banging it would get on this rocky shore if
a good south wind sprang up. For a long time I escaped the winds. When
they came.... I'll tell you who I was and what she was. Do you remember
on the _Arrow_ Captain Curran's story of Tom Jones?"

He looked up at her interested face, and saw the violet eyes widen with
sudden horror.

"I remember," she cried with astonishment and pain. "You, Arthur, you
the victim of that shameful story?"

"Do you remember what you said then, Honora, when Curran declared he
would one day find Tom Jones?"

She knew by the softness of his speech that her saying had penetrated
the lad's heart, and had been treasured till this day, would be
treasured forever.

"And you were sitting there, in the cabin, not ten feet off, listening
to him and me?" she said with a gasp of pleasure.

"'You will never find him, Captain Curran ... that fearful woman
shattered his very soul ... I know the sort of man he was ... he will
never go back ... if he can bear to live, it will be because in h