he
world. He was bound by the law of the church to give up father, mother,
sister, brother--all."

"The church be--do you mean to say--"

"Peace, my son, you do not understand," said the bishop, lifting the
little cross which he had taken gently from the factor at the beginning
of the interview.

Now the factor was not in the habit of having his requests ignored and
his judgment questioned.

"Do you mean to say you will _not_ give me the name and address of the
dead man's mother?"

"It's absolutely impossible. Moreover, I am shocked to learn that our
late brother could so far forget his duty at the very door of death. No,
son, a thousand times no," said the bishop.

"Then give me the crucifix!" demanded the factor, fiercely.

"That, too, is impossible; that is the property of the church."

"Well," said the factor, filling his pipe again and gazing into the
flickering fire, "they're all about the same. And they're all right,
too, I presume--all but Wing and Dunraven and me."

THE MYSTERIOUS SIGNAL

As Waterloo lingered in the memory of the conquered Corsican, so
Ashtabula was burned into the brain of Bradish. Out of that awful wreck
he crawled, widowed and childless. For a long time he did not realize,
for his head was hurt in that frightful crash.

By the time he was fit to leave the hospital they had told him, little
by little, that all his people had perished.

He made his way to the West, where he had a good home and houses to rent
and a hole in the hillside that was just then being changed from a
prospect to a mine.

The townspeople, who had heard of the disaster, waited for him to speak
of it--but he never did. The neighbors nodded, and he nodded to them and
passed on about his business. The old servant came and asked if she
should open the house, and he nodded. The man-servant--the woman's
husband--came also, and to him Bradish nodded; and at noon he had
luncheon alone in the fine new house that had just been completed a year
before the catastrophe.

About once a week Bradish would board the midnight express, ride down
the line for a few hundred miles, and double back.

When he went away they knew he had gone, and when he came back they knew
he had returned and that was as much as his house-keeper, his agent, or
the foreman at the mines could tell you.

One would have thought that the haunting memory of Ashtabula would have
kept him at home for the rest of his life; but he seemed to tr