“O Clarke, wait: there is the doctor now.” It was Polly who was speaking. She had come as far as the church in her search after Dr. Izard and had just seen him issuing from his own gate.

“He has a bag in his hand; he is going on one of his journeys.”

“No, no,” she protested, “I cannot have it.” And bounding forward she intercepted the doctor, just as he was about to step into his buggy. “O doctor, you are not going away; you are not going to leave me with this dreadful trouble; don’t, don’t, I pray!” The doctor, who in his abstraction had not noted her approach, started at the sound of her voice, and turning showed her a very haggard face.

“Why,” she cried, stepping back, “you are ill yourself.”

“No,” he answered shortly, drawing himself up in his old reserved manner. “I had but little sleep last night, but I am not ill. What do you want, Polly?”

“O don’t you know what I want? You, of all the town, have said he was an impostor! To you then I come as to my only hope; speak, speak, is he not my father?”

The doctor with a side glance at Clarke, who had remained in the background, drew the girl’s hand within his arm and led her a few steps away. But it seemed an involuntary movement on his part, for he presently brought her back within easy earshot of her lover.

“He does not look to me like Ephraim Earle,” he was saying. “He has not his eyes, nor does his voice sound familiar. I do not see why any one acknowledges him.”

“But they can’t help it. He knows everybody, and everything. I—I thought you had some good reason, Dr. Izard, something that would make it easy for me to deny his claims.”

“You—” The doctor’s sleepless night seemed to have had a strange effect upon him, for he stammered in speaking, he who was always so cold and precise. “You thought—” he began, but presently broke into that new, strange laugh of his, and urging Polly towards her lover, he addressed his questions to the latter. “Does this man,” he asked, “make a serious claim upon the Earle name and its rights?”

Clarke, who was always sensible when in Dr. Izard’s presence of something intangible but positive acting like a barrier between them and yet who strangely revered the doctor, summoned up his courage and responded with the respect he really felt.

“Yes,” said he; but with a certain reserve, “that is our best reason perhaps for believing him. He promises not to molest Polly, nor to make any demands upon her until she herself recognizes her duty.”

The frown which darkened the doctor’s face deepened.

“He is a deep one, then,” said he, and stood for a moment silent.

“If he is an impostor, yes,” assented Clarke; “but Lawyer Crouse, who talked with him half an hour last night, accepted him at once, and so did Mr. Sutherland.” Mr. Sutherland was the Baptist minister.

“The fools!” muttered the doctor, as much in anger as amazement; “has the whole town reached its dotage?”

Clarke, who seemed surprised at the doctor’s vehemence, quietly remarked:

“You were Mr. Earle’s best friend. If you say that this man is not he, there would of course be many to listen to you.”

But the doctor, resuming his accustomed expression, refused an answer to this suggestion, at which Polly’s face grew very pale, and she grasped his arm imploringly, saying as she did so:

“I cannot bear this uncertainty, I cannot bear to think there is any question about this matter. If he is my father, I owe him everything; if he is not——”

“Polly,”—The doctor spoke coldly but not unkindly, “marry Clarke, go with him to Cleveland where he has the promise of a fine position, and leave this arrant pretender to settle his rights himself. He will not urge them long when he finds the money gone for which he is striving.”

“You bid me do that? Then you know he is not my father.”

But the doctor instead of answering with the vigorous yes she had expected, looked aside and carelessly murmured:

“I have said that I saw no likeness in him to the man I once knew. Of course my judgment was hurried, our interview was short and I was laboring under the shock of his appearance. But if everybody else in town recognizes him as Ephraim Earle, I must needs think my opinion was warped by my surprise and the indignation I felt at what I considered a gross piece of presumption.”

“Then you do not know,” quoth poor Polly, her head sinking lower and lower on her breast.

“No,” cried the doctor, turning shortly at the word and advancing once more t............