his two friends waved an airy adieu; and Brandes went slowly back to the dark verandah where sat a young girl, pitifully immature in mind and body—and two old people little less innocent for all their experience in the ranks of Christ, for all the wounds that scarred them both in the over-sea service which had broken them forever.

“A very handsome and distinguished gentleman, your friend Dr. Curfoot,” said the Reverend Mr. Carew. “I imagine his practice in New York is not only fashionable but extensive.”

“Both,” said Brandes.

“I assume so. He seems to be intimately acquainted with people whose names for generations have figured prominently in the social columns of the New York press.”

“Oh, yes, Curfoot and Quint know them all.”

Which was true enough. They had to. One must know people from whom one accepts promissory notes to liquidate those little affairs peculiar to the temple 76 of chance. And New York’s best furnished the neophytes for these rites.

76

“I thought Captain Quint very interesting,” ventured Ruhannah. “He seems to have sailed over the entire globe.”

“Naval men are always delightful,” said her mother. And, laying her hand on her husband’s arm in the dark: “Do you remember, Wilbour, how kind the officers from the cruiser Oneida were when the rescue party took us aboard?”

“God sent the Oneida to us,” said her husband dreamily. “I thought it was the end of the world for us—for you and me and baby Rue—that dreadful flight from the mission to the sea.”

His bony fingers tightened over his wife’s toilworn hand. In the long grass along the creek fireflies sparkled, and their elfin lanterns, waning, glowing, drifted high in the calm August night.

The Reverend Mr. Carew gathered his crutches; the night was a trifle damp for him; besides, he desired to read. Brandes, as always, rose to aid him. His wife followed.

“Don’t stay out long, Rue,” she said in the doorway.

“No, mother.”

Brandes came back. Departing from his custom, he did not light a cigar, but sat in silence, his narrow eyes trying to see Ruhannah in the darkness. But she was only a delicate shadow shape to him, scarcely detached 

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