It was growing dusk when Frazier brought Mary back to the farm. He did not stop, having some important business to attend to that evening, and drove back to the village. Mary was very unhappy. From a window in the parlor of the hotel she had seen Tobe Keith taken to the train, and the silent awe of the bystanders, the grave looks of the doctors, the nurse, and Mrs. Keith in her best dress induced a feeling of vast depression. She had heard people on the pavement below saying that Keith would never be cured—that no man in his condition could stand the operation that was proposed. She thought, too, that Mrs. Quinby had failed to give her much encouragement. Indeed, it was almost as if her good friend were trying to prepare her for the worst.

Finding no one in sight about the house, Mary went straight to the barn to acquaint her brothers with all that had taken place. She tried to shake off the morbid feeling which clung to her so persistently, not realizing that it was due to the fact of her still being, in a sense, in the power of Albert Frazier. It was true that he had not paid for Keith\'s expenses, but he had managed to make her feel her absolute dependence on him for the safety of her brothers. She shuddered, and fairly cringed, under the thought that she had not repulsed him when he had put his arm around her in a secluded spot on the road home and kissed her on the cheek. The spot stung now as if it were a wound which her rising flush was irritating.

She had seen her brothers in their loft, and was entering the house, when she met Charles descending from his room.

"You are late," he smiled. "We have had supper already."

"So have I," she answered. "I took it early with Mrs. Quinby at the hotel. We drove rapidly, as Mr. Frazier had to hurry back to town."

She sat down on the veranda, and he stood, with an unusual air of embarrassment, quite near to her.

"Sit down, please," she said. "I know you are tired from your work."

He obeyed willingly enough, but it seemed to her that there was a certain undefinable restraint about him. They sat silent for several minutes. She was watching his face attentively. At any other time she might have been amused. Did he not realize that his failure to inquire about Tobe Keith was an indirect confession of the part he had played the night before?

"Well, they took Tobe to Atlanta to-day," she suddenly announced, still eying him closely.

"Oh, did they?" he exclaimed.

She said nothing for another moment. "I suppose you think that Albert furnished the money?" she continued. She smiled now at his look of confusion, and as he made no reply she went on: "Well, he didn\'t. When I got to Mrs. Keith\'s this morning I learned that some one else had given her the necessary money. No one knows from whom it came."

"That\'s strange," Charles said, feebly.

"Yes, it was very strange. It seems that the man who brought it was an absolute stranger. He turned it over to Mrs. Keith, but refused to say who sent it. The whole town is talking about it."

"Very strange indeed," Charles said, still awkwardly. "I hope the poor fellow will stand his journey well."

"Yes, sending money like that was very strange," Mary persisted. "Most persons do their charity differently. They blow a horn, sound a trumpet, or get it into the papers; but this is genuine charity. However, it will leak out. You can\'t keep things like that hidden long."

"What do the doctors think—do they think that his chances are good for recovery?"

Again Mary ignored his remark, smiling faintly through the dusk as she watched his obvious floundering. "No, a deed like that is too rare and fine for the author of it to keep hidden. Oh, if you could have been there with me this morning and seen that poor mother\'s face and her son\'s as they told about how the money came, you would have felt like crying for joy. I did. I couldn\'t help it. I broke down. I think I know now what heaven is like. It is like I felt at that moment. They were like two happy children, and I was happy, too, and grateful." Here Mary actually sobbed. "I was grateful to some unknown person who had saved me from—from the most humiliating thing that ever threatened me. I was willing to give my life rather than accept that aid from Albert Frazier, and it had come in that mysterious way like a gift from God at the very last moment. You must help me—help me find out who did it, Mr. Brown. Will you?"

He stared like a man in a bewildered dream. "Yes, yes," he stammered, "I will, but why bother about it now, anyway?"

"\'Bother about it\'! How can you use such words? You see, you are not in my place. You can\'t realize how I feel. I want to see him. I want to look into his face, as—as I am looking into yours now, and tell him just how I feel and what he has done for me. I want to repay him. I want to tell him that there is nothing—nothing under high heaven I would not do for him. I want him to tell me what to do in all this darkness that has gathered about me and is stifling hope and life out of me, young as I am. I want to be his faithful friend till the end of time. I want to serve him—to be his slave—anything."

Charles rose to his feet awkwardly. "I—I see how you feel, Miss Rowland," he said. "But I am afraid I am keeping you from your duties. By the way, your father has gone over to Dodd\'s. He came by the field and asked me to tell you that he would not be back till about bedtime."

Mary got up also. She reached out and took his arm and walked with him to the other end of the veranda. He felt her hand trembling. She pressed his arm against her side. "You shall not go yet!" she cried, passionately. "I have been beating about the bush. I know that you did that thing. I\'ve known it all day. No one else knows, but I do—and it has made me so happy. I could not have taken it from any one else, but I want to take it from you. I want to take it, because I know you wanted to give it. I know how you feel about me, and I want you to know how I feel about you."

Had the heavens split above him, dropping flames of celestial fire, he could not have felt more ecstatic. She ha............