Grimm's kind eyes had never for an instant left her troubled face, nor had they failed to note her evident relief at escaping from the room. As the door closed behind her, the kindly look faded from the old eyes, leaving them hard and cold. The firm jaw set more tightly. Yet, as he turned toward Frederik, there was no trace in his tone of anything but pleasant banter.

"There, Fritzy!" said he. "You see James was only 'respectful to her in a perfectly friendly way.' I hope you are quite satisfied?"

"I am," answered Frederik. "Quite. In fact I'm every bit as satisfied as you are, uncle."

Grimm sat very still for a moment or so, staring blindly into space, his head on his breast. Then, with a sigh, he roused himself. Reaching for the telephone he called up his office.

"Send Mr. Hartmann over here," he commanded.

He set down the instrument and resumed his blank stare into nothingness. Frederik was once more wholly engrossed in the book he was not reading. Hartmann broke in upon the strained silence.

"You sent for me, sir?" he asked, his breezy bigness waking the still room to life.

"Yes," replied Peter Grimm. "James, it has occurred to me—to ask—it has occurred to me that—James, please tell me your reason for asking a few minutes ago to be transferred to Florida?"

James made no immediate reply. He seemed ransacking his mind for the right words. Grimm eyed him closely, asking with sudden directness:

"Was it on account of my little girl?"

"Yes, sir," replied Hartmann.

The secretary's confusion had fled. Calm, self-contained, flinching not at all from the shrewd, searching eyes that were fixed on his own, he stood awaiting the breaking of the storm.

CHAPTER IV

"James," said the old man, "go to the office and get your money. Then start for Florida headquarters. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, sir," replied James, grasping the outstretched hand. "I'm very sorry."

"I'm sorry, too, James. Good-bye!"

As Hartmann left the room, Grimm turned to Frederik, and his eyes were full of pain.

"That is settled, thank Heaven!" he announced; but there was no jubilance in his voice. "I wish—Hello, there's old McPherson!"

Glad to divert his mind he hurried to the front door to welcome the visitor and drew him into the room with friendly roughness.

Dr. McPherson would have borne the stamp, "Family physician of the Old School," even had he been found in the ranks of the Matabele army. Big, shaggy, bearded, he was of the ancient and puissant type that, under the tidal wave of "specialism" is fast being swept towards the shores where live the last survivors of the Great Auk, the Dinosaur, and the Spread Eagle Orator tribes.

"Good-morning, Peter," hailed the doctor, a Scotch burr faintly rasping his bluff voice. "Morning, Fred. I passed young Hartmann at the gate. He looks as if he was taking a pleasure trip to his own funeral. What ails him?"

No one answered.

"He's about the finest lad that ever I brought into the world. What's happened to make him so——? Good-morning, Kathrien," he broke off, as the girl, followed by Marta, came in with Grimm's long delayed breakfast.

"Good-morning, Doctor," she answered. "Oom Peter, you forgot to send for this. So I——"

"What's that?" roared McPherson, sniffing the air like a bull that scents an enemy. "Coffee? Why, damn it, Peter, I forbade you to touch coffee. It's rank poison to you. And you know it is. I told you——"

"Wouldn't you like a cup, Doctor?" asked Kathrien innocently.

"I——"

"Of course he'll take a cup," interrupted Grimm. "He'll damn it. But he'll drink it."

"And look here!" proceeded McPherson, pointing an accusing finger at the breakfast tray. "Waffles! Actually waffles! And after I told you——"

"Yes, Katje," explained Grimm, "he'll damn the waffles, too. But, if you watch closely, you'll notice he'll eat some. Sit down, Andrew."

"I tell you," fumed the doctor, "I didn't come here to encourage you, by my example, in wrecking your system. I came for a serious talk with you, Peter."

Kathrien, at the hint, discreetly effaced herself. Frederik followed her example.

"Well? well?" queried Peter in mock despair, seating himself opposite his old crony and tyrant. "What new horrors of diet have you thought up for my misery? Out with it. Let me know the worst."

"It isn't your body this time, Peter," was the troubled answer. "It's something that means more. The matter's been keeping me awake all night. Tell me:—how is every one provided for in this house?"

"Provided for?" echoed Peter in bewilderment. "How do you mean? Everybody gets enough to eat and we are——"

"Why, you don't understand me. You're a wonderful man for making plans, Peter. But what have you done?"

"Done?"

"If you—if you were to die—say to-morrow, or—or any other time," went on the doctor with an effort at carelessness that sat on his rough honesty as ill as his Sunday broadcloth adorned his rugged shoulders, "if you—die—unexpectedly,—how would it be with the rest of them here?"

Grimm set down his coffee cup with slow precision. And slowly he raised his eyes to McPherson's worried gaze.

"What do you mean?" he asked with something very like awe in his tone. "If I were to die to-morrow——"

"You won't!" declared McPherson emphatically. "You won't. So don't worry. You're good for a long time yet. A score of years, perhaps. You're all right, if you take decent care of yourself. Which you never do. But we've all got to come to it, sooner or later. And it's well to make provision. For instance, what would Kathrien's position be in this house, in case you were taken out of it? Kathrien is a little 'prescription' of mine, you'll remember. And—I suppose your heart is still set on her marrying Frederik, so that what is one's will be the other's. Personally I've always thought it was rather a pity that Frederik wasn't James and James wasn't Frederik."

"Eh?" cried Peter. "What's that?"

"It's none of my business," answered McPherson. "And it's all very well as it stands—if she wants Frederik. But if you want to do anything for her future welfare, take my advice, and do it now."

"You mean," Peter said evenly, between stiffening lips, "you mean that I could—die?"

"Every one can," replied McPherson with elephantine lightness. "And at one time or another, every one does. It's a thing to be prepared for."

"One moment," urged Grimm, the keen little eyes piercing the other's badly woven cloak of indifference. "You think that I——!"

"I mean nothing more nor less, Peter, than that the machinery is wearing out. There's absolutely no cause for apprehension. Still, I thought I had better tell you."

"But," asked Grimm with a pathetic insistence, "if there's no cause for apprehension——?"

"Listen, Peter: when I cured you of that cold the other day—the cold you got by tramping around like an idiot among the wet flower-beds without rubbers—I made a discovery of—of something I can't cure."

Grimm studied his friend's unreadable face for an instant with an almost painful intensity. Then a smile swept away the worry from his own visage.

"Oh, Andrew, you old croaking Scotch raven," he cried. "Your professional ways will be the death of some one yet. But the 'some one' won't be Peter Grimm. That sick bed manner is splendid for bullying old maids into taking their tonic. But it's wasted on a grown man. No, no, Andrew. You can't make me out an invalid. You doctors are a sorry lot. You pour medicines of which you know little into systems of which you know nothing. You condemn people to death as the old Inquisition would have blushed to. Why, every day we read in the papers about some frisky boy a hundred years old whom the doctors gave up for lost when he was twenty-five. And," the forced gaiety in his voice merging into aggressive resolve, "I'm going to live to see children in this old house of mine. Katje's babies creeping about this very floor; sliding down those bannisters over there, pulling the ears of Lad, my collie."

"Good Lord, Peter! That dog is fifteen years old now! Argue yourself into miraculous longevity if you want to. But don't argue old Lad into it. Do you expect nothing will ever change in your home?"

"Perhaps," agreed Peter, with unshaken defiance. "But not before I live to see a new line of rosy-faced, fluffy-haired little Grimms."

McPherson leaned back with a sigh of discouragement. Then, with professional insight, he noted for the first time the gallant fight the old man opposite him was making to keep up that obstinate gay courage whose outward expression had so irritated the doctor. And, all at once, McPherson ceased to become the gruff friend and assumed the rôle that Ananias's physician probably acquired from his famous patient and which, most assuredly, he has handed down to all his medical successors.

"I see no reason, Peter," said he with judicial ponderousness, "why you shouldn't reach a ripe old age. You're quite likely to outlive me and a host of younger men. Only, take better care of yourself. And,—no matter how many probable years of life a man has before him, it does him no harm to set his house in order. Think over that part of my advice and forget the rest of it."

"Forget the rest of it," echoed Grimm absently. "The rest——"

McPherson hesitated; then as though overcome by a temptation too strong for him to battle against, he blurted out half-shamefacedly:

"Peter—don't laugh at me. I want to make a strange compact with you. As I've told you, you're quite likely to outlive me. But—will you agree that whichever of us happens to—to go first,—shall come back and—and let the other fellow know? Let the other fellow know; so as to settle the Great Question once and for all?"

Grimm stared at him for a moment. Then he set the room ringing with a laugh of whose mocking heartiness there could be no doubt.

"Oh, Andrew! Andrew!" he cried, when he could get his breath. "Still riding your one crazy hobby! And you so sane in other ways!"

"But you'll make the compact?" begged McPherson. "You're a man of your word,——"

"Make a compact to——? Oh, no, no, man. No! I'd be ashamed to have people know I was such a fool."

"But," urged the doctor, "no one else need know anything about it. It'll be just between ourselves."

"No, no, dear old Andrew," laughed Grimm indulgently. "Positively no! I refuse, point-blank. I'll do you any favour in reason. But I draw the line at being dragged into any of your absurd spook tests."

"You sneer at 'spooks,' as you call them," retorted the doctor. "Most people do. Just as people scoffed when Columbus told them there was an America. But how many times do you think you have seen a spook, yourself?"

"A spook? I can't remember that I ever——"

"Yes, a ghost."

"A ghost," repeated Grimm with the utmost solemnity and wrinkling his forehead as in an effort of memory. "I can't just now recall——"

"That's right! Make fun of me! But you can't tell that man is complete—that he doesn't live more than one life;—that the soul doesn't pass on and on. Smile if you like. Wiser men than yourself have believed it. Why, man alive, every human being is surcharged with a persistent personal energy. And that energy must continue forever."

"Oh, Doctor, Doctor!" exclaimed Kathrien, coming in with a fresh supply of hot waffles. "Have you started on spooks again?"

"Yes, Katje," sighed Peter dolorously. "There can be no possible redeeming doubt about that. He's started."

"And," laughed the girl, "I wasn't on hand to hear him. Have I missed very much of it?"

"No," answered her uncle. "We're still in the painful early stages of the squabble. I'll tell you what I'll do, Andrew: I'll compromise with you. Instead of making the bargain you proposed, I'll stand aside and let you go ahead of me into the next world. Then you can come back at your leisure and keep the spook compact. It'll be quite interesting. Every time a knock sounds or a chair creaks or a door bangs or Lad growls in his sleep, I'll strike an attitude and say: 'Ssh! There's Doc!'"

"Don't guy me, old friend," urged McPherson. "I'm entirely serious. I'll make the promise and I want you to make it, too. Understand, I'm no so-called Spiritist. I'm just a groping seeker after the Truth."

"That's what they all say," scoffed Grimm. "Seekers after the truth! And madly eager to believe everything they hear or read except the commonsense truth. And you, a level-headed Scotchman, old enough to be your own father, actually gulp down such tomfoolery! Next we'll have you chasing around the streets at night, looking with a dark lantern for the bogey man."

"Laugh at me if you like. I know I'm right. I know the dead are alive. They're here. Right here. They're all about us, watching us, suffering with us, rejoicing with us, trying no doubt to speak the warnings and encouragements that our world-deafened mortal ears cannot hear. I'm not alone in the theory. Some of the greatest scientists—the wisest men of the century—are of the same opinion."

"Dreamers," smiled Grimm indulgently. "Dreamers like yourself."

"Dreamers, eh?" The doctor caught him up vehemently. "Dreamers? You can't call Sir William Crookes, the inventor of the Crookes' Tubes, a dreamer! No, nor Sir Oliver Lodge, the great biologist; or Curie, who discovered radium; or Dr. Lombroso, the founder of the science of criminology. Are Maxwell, Dr. Vesine, Richet, and our own American, Dr. Hyslop, dreamers? Why, even Professor James, the mighty Harvard psychologist, took a peep at ghosts. And, instead of laughing at 'spooks,' the big scientific men are trying to lay hold of them. I tell you, Peter, Science is just beginning to peer through the half-open door that a few years ago was shut tight."

"Trying to lay hold of ghosts, are they?" said Grimm. "I'd like to lay hold of one. I'd lug it to the nearest police station. That's the place for 'em. Just as the asylum's the place for folks who believe in 'em. When you 'pass over,' Andrew, you'd better not come back. You won't enjoy prowling around a world where sane people don't believe you exist."

"Peter," reproved McPherson, "I'm sorry—very, very sorry—that you and others like you think it's smart to make a joke of something you can't understand. Hyslop was right when he said Man will spend millions of dollars to discover the North Pole, but not one cent to throw a ray of light upon his immortal destiny."

"And, after the millions of times they've been exposed, you blame me for not joining in your belief in spook mediums!"

"A lot of mediums are humbugs, I grant you. Just as there are fakers in every profession. If there were no such thing as real money, there would be no object in making counterfeits. And some of the mediums have proven clearly that they are capable of real demonstrations."

"They are, hey? What's the use of mediums at all if the dead can really come back? If my friends who have died return to earth, why don't they walk straight up to me and say, 'Well, Peter Grimm. Here we are!' When they do that, I shall gladly be the first man to take off my hat to them and hold out my hand. But as long as they have to employ greasy mediums to make their presence known, and try to prove they are with me by knocking on tables and tipping chairs and scratching on slates, there is only one of two things to believe: Either mediums are fakes, or else folks all become imbecile practical jokers as soon as they die."

"Imbecile practical jokers!" repeated Kathrien, shocked.

"Yes," reiterated Peter Grimm. "That's what I said. And it's a mild way of putting it. Would any sane man play such tricks as the spiritualists attribute to our dead? It shatters every thought of the majesty of death. Would a sane live man walk into my house and announce his presence to me by rapping on a wall or tipping a table or scrawling idiotic messages on a slate or talking to me through some half-educated 'medium'? Would he——?"

"Yes, he would!" asserted the doctor. "He'd do all those things and more, if he couldn't make you see him or hear him in any other way. As to mediums,—why doesn't a telegram travel through the air as well as on a wire? Your friends could come back to you in the old way if you could but put yourself in a receptive condition. But you can't. So you must depend on a non-professional medium,—a 'sensitive'——"

"See, Katje," interpolated Grimm, "he has names for them all. All neatly classified like so many germs in a bottle. Well, Andrew, how many ghosts did you see last night? He has only to shut his eyes, Katje, and along comes the parade. Spooks! Spooks! Spooks! Nice, grisly, shivering, spooky spooks! And now he wants me to put my house in order and settle up my affairs and join the parade."

"Settle your affairs?" asked Kathrien puzzled.

"Oh, it's just his nonsense," Grimm hastened to assure her. "Andrew,"—he hurried on to turn the subject from dangerous personalities,—"you've seen a whole lot of people pass over to the Other Side. In fact, your patients seem to have quite a habit of doing that. Tell me: did you ever see one out of all that number come back again? Just one?"

"No," answered McPherson reluctantly. "I never did, but——"

"No," cried Grimm in triumph, "and what's more, you never will. Yet you——"

"There was not perhaps the intimate bond between doctor and patients to bring them back to me. But in my own family, I've known of a 'return' such as you speak of. A distant cousin of mine died in London. And at almost that very instant, she was seen in New York."

"Rubbish!"

"Rubbish? Why? A century ago, if any one had tried to describe the telephone, people of your sort would have grunted 'Rubbish!' But if my voice can carry thousands of miles over the telephone, why cannot a soul, with God-given force behind it, dart over the entire universe? Is Thomas Edison greater than God?"

"Oh, Doctor," gasped the horrified Kathrien.

"And what's more," rushed on McPherson, unheeding, "they can't lay it all to telepathy. In the case of a spirit message giving the contents of a sealed letter known only to the person who has died—telepathy, eh? Not a bit of it. Here's a case you must have heard of, Peter. An officer on the Polar vessel Jeannette sent out by a New York newspaper, appeared one night at his wife's bedside. She was in Brooklyn. She knew perfectly well that he was on the Polar Sea. He said to her: 'Count!' Then she distinctly heard a ship's bell and her husband's voice saying again, 'Count!' She had counted 'six' when his voice said: 'Six bells! And the Jeannette is lost!' The ship, it turned out later, was really lost at the very time the woman had the vision. There! Account for that by telepathy or trickery if you can!"

"A bad dream!" was Grimm's unshaken verdict. "I have them every now and then. 'Six bells and'—suet pudding brings me messages from the North Pole. And I can get messages from Kingdom Come when I've had half a hot mince pie with melted cheese on it for supper. That disposes of your Jeannette case."

"Scoff if you like. There have been more than seventeen thousand other cases which the London Society of Psychical Research has found worth investigating."

"Well, Andrew," asked Grimm, with a covert wink at Kathrien, "supposing, for the sake of argument, that I did want to 'come back,' how could I manage it?"

At the question the doctor's rising irritation at the other's friendly mockery was swept away by the zeal of prospective proselyting.

"In this way, Peter," he declared. "Let me make it clear as simply as I can. In hypnotism our thoughts take possession of the person we hypnotise. When our personalities enter their bodies, something goes out of them:—a sort of Shadow Self. This 'Self' can be sent out of the room—out of the house—even to a long distance. This 'Self' is the force that, I firmly believe, departs from us entirely on the first or second or third day after death. This is the force you could send back. The astral envelope. Do I make it plain?"

"Plain? Plain as a flower in the mud on a dark night. But how do you know I've got an—'envelope'?"

"Every one has. Why, De Roche has actually photographed one, by means of radio-photography."

Grimm lay back in his chair and shouted aloud with laughter.

"Mind you," went on McPherson, laboriously anxious to make clear his point, "they could not see it when they were photographing it."

"No, I should imagine not. Nor the picture after it was taken. But in other respects, I don't doubt it was a splendid likeness."

"Wait, before you try to be funny. Wait till I tell you about it. This 'envelope' or Shadow Self stood a few feet away from the sleeper. It was invisible, of course, to the eye. It was only located by striking the air and watching for the corresponding portion of the sleeper's body to recoil. By pricking a certain part of the Shadow Self with a pin, the cheek of the patient could be made to bleed. It was at that spot that the camera was focussed for fifteen minutes! The result was——"

"A spoiled film."

"No, the profile of a head!" contradicted Dr. McPherson.

Grimm stared at him wonderingly.

"And you actually believe such idiocy?" he demanded.

"It isn't a mere question of belief," declared McPherson, "but of absolute knowledge. De Roche, who took the picture, is not a fraud, but a lawyer of high standing. A room full of famous scientists saw the picture taken."

"If they were honest, they were hypnotised."

"Perhaps you think the camera was hypnotised, too," retorted the doctor. "Lombroso says that once under similar circumstances an unnatural current of cold air went through the room and lowered the thermometer several degrees. These are facts. Can you hypnotise a thermometer?"

"Oh, isn't that wonderful?" breathed Kathrien.

Grimm patted her shoulder gently, smiling as one might smile who sees a dearly loved child taken in by a wonder-story. Then he turned to McPherson, the banter in face and voice changed to mild reproof.

"No, Andrew," said he, reaching for his long meerschaum pipe and holding its coffee-brown bowl lovingly between his thick fingers, as he proceeded to fill it from a pouch on the mantel, "No, Andrew. I refuse your compact. I'll have no part or parcel in it. Because it's an impossible thing you ask of me. We don't come back. One cannot pick the lock of Heaven's gate. It is no part of our terms with the Almighty. God did enough for us when He gave us life and gave us the strength to work, and then gave us work to do. He owes us no explanation. I'll take my chances on the old-fashioned Paradise—with a locked gate. No bogies for me."

With another reassuring smile at Kathrien as she went out with the tray of breakfast things, he lighted his pipe and repeated musingly:

"No bogies for me, I say. Who are you that you should take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence? Why," he broke out, "what ails you, man?"

CHAPTER V

"Hold on, Andrew! Hold on!" cried Grimm, hastily setting down his pipe and hurrying forward to intercept his angrily departing guest. "Man, man, can't you keep your temper? I didn't mean to rile you. Come back. If you take the thing so seriously, I'll—I'll make the compact with you. Here's my hand on it. I know you're an old fool. And I'm another. So we're both in bad company. Shake hands. Now then! Whichever of us does go first is to come back and try to make himself known to the other. And——"

A fit of uncontrollable laughter cut across his words. The doctor frowned pettishly and made as though to turn away. But Peter still held his hand and would not let it go.

"There, Andrew!" he said remorsefully, as he wiped the laughter tears from his eyes. "I've riled you again. I'm sorry. We'll leave the matter this way: if I go first—and if I can come back, I will come back—and I'll apologise to you for being in the wrong. There! Does that satisfy you, Andrew? I say I'll come back and apologise."

"You mean it, Peter?" asked McPherson eagerly. "You're not joking?"

"No, I mean it. If I can, I'll come back. And if I come back I'll apologise to you. It's a deal. Now let's have a nip of my plum brandy to seal the compact."

"Good!"

"I'll step down to the cellar and get a fresh bottle of it. That one on the sideboard hasn't got two man's size drinks left in it. I'll be back in a minute and then we'll drink to spooks. Especially to spooks that come back and apologise."

With a chuckle at his own odd conceit, he vanished cellarward. As the door closed behind him, Kathrien came in from the dining-room, where evidently she had been awaiting a chance for a word alone with McPherson.

"Doctor," she asked almost breathlessly, "do you really believe the dead can come back?"

"Why not?" demanded McPherson, beginning to bristle for a new argument. "Why shouldn't they?"

"But—you mean to say you could come back to this room if you were dead, and I could see you?"

"You might not see me. I don't say you could. But I could come back."

"And—and could you talk to me?"

"I think so."

"But, could I hear you?"

"That I don't know. You see, that's what we gropers after the light are trying to make possible. Hello!" he interrupted himself, in a none too pleased whisper. "Here are some people that can talk and that one can't help hearing!"

Ushered in by Willem, the Rev. Mr. Batholommey, the local Episcopal clergyman of Grimm Manor, and his placid, portly wife, swept in from the vestibule on clerical visitation bent.

"Good-morning, Doctor," sighed Mrs. Batholommey, comprising the whole sunlit room in one all-compassionate glance.

"Good-morning, Kathrien."

"Good-morning, Mrs. Batholommey," answered Kathrien, loudly enough to drown McPherson's growl of unwelcoming welcome. "Good-morning, Pastor. Oom Peter will be back directly. I'll tell him you're here."

She hurried out of the room. McPherson showed strong inclination to follow her. But Mrs. Batholommey had already singled him out for her prey and bore down upon him with a becomingly woe-begone face.

"Oh, Doctor," she panted, wiping her eyes. "Does he know it yet? Does he?"

"Does who know what?" snapped the doctor, his glance straying wrathfully toward the rotund clergyman, who all at once assumed an abjectly apologetic air and interested himself in a picture on the farther wall.

"Poor dear Mr. Grimm," pursued Mrs. Batholommey. "Does he know he's going to die?"

Willem, who was halfway out of the room by this time, halted, turned back and, unobserved, stood listening with wide eyes and open mouth.

"What in blue blazes are you talking about?" thundered McPherson, glowering down on his rector's wife in a most unadmiring manner.

"About Mr. Grimm. Does he know yet that he must die?"

"Does the whole damned town know it?" roared the doctor.

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Batholommey in prim horror at the explosive adjective.

"You see, Doctor," put in the rector with urbane haste, before his spouse could recover breath to rebuke the blasphemer or return to the attack. "You see, it's this way: You consulted Mr. Grimm's lawyer. And his wife told my wife."

"Gabbed, did he?" snorted McPherson. "To perdition with the professional man who gabs to his wife!"

"Oh, Doctor!" expostulated Mrs. Batholommey. "How can——?"

"I am inexpressibly grieved," said her husband, "to learn that Mr. Grimm has an incurable malady. And is it true that the nature of it is——?"

"The nature of the whole affair is this," returned McPherson. "He isn't to be told. Understand that, please. He must not know. I didn't say he had to die at once. He may outlive us all. He probably will. And, in any event, no one must speak to him about it."

"I should think," said Mrs. Batholommey in lofty rebuke, "that a man's rector might be allowed to talk to him on such a theme. It seems to me, Dr. McPherson, if you can't do any more, it's his turn. From the way you doctors assume control of everything, it's a wonder to me you don't want to baptise the babies, too."

"Rose!" murmured the doctor in mild reproof.

"At the last moment," Mrs. Batholommey insisted, ignoring her husband, "Mr. Grimm will want to make a will. And you know he hasn't. He'll want to remember the Episcopal Church of Grimm Manor, and his charities—and his—friends. If he doesn't, the rector will be blamed as usual. You're not doing right, Doctor, in keeping——"

"Rose! My dear!" interjected her husband. "These private matters——"

"But——"

"I'll trouble you, Mrs. Batholommey," shouted McPherson, "to attend to your own affairs, and——"

"Doctor!" bleated the rector.

"Oh, let him talk, Henry!" sniffed Mrs. Batholommey in semi-tearful exaltation. "I can bear it. Besides," coming to earth level, "no one in town pays any attention to what he says since he has taken up with spiritualism."

"Oh, Rose! My dear!"

"Shut up!" whispered McPherson wrathfully. "Here he comes. Remember what I——"

Peter Grimm put an end to the warning by reappearing from the cellar with a small demijohn in his hand. His face brightened into a smile of pleasant greeting as he saw his two new guests.

"Why," he exclaimed, "this is the jolliest sort of a surprise. I hope I haven't kept you waiting long?"

The rector and his wife glanced at each other in embarrassment. Mrs. Batholommey turned toward Peter with a lachrymose grimace, intended doubtless for a consoling smile, and seemed about to break into a torrent of speech. But the rector, after a timid look at McPherson, nervously forestalled her by coming hurriedly to the front.

"Good-morning, dear friend," said he. "This is just a little impromptu visit of gratitude. We wish to thank you for the lovely flowers that Willem brought us a few minutes ago, and for the noble check you sent yesterday."

"Why," laughed Peter uncomfortably, "please don't even think of thanking me. I——"

"And," nervously pursued the rector, sparring for time, "I want to let you know how much we are still enjoying the delicious vegetables you so generously provided. I did relish that squash. If I were obliged to say offhand what my favourite vegetable is, I——"

"Pardon me," interposed Peter, his glance straying past the rector and resting with swift concern upon Mrs. Batholommey's quivering expanse of face, "but is anything distressing you, Mrs. Ba——?"

"No, no!" interjected the rector with break-neck haste.

"No, no!" responded Mrs. Batholommey in the same breath.

A half inaudible growl from Dr. McPherson completed the triple chord of negation. A chord so explosive, so crassly out of keeping with the simple question that evoked it that Grimm stared amazed from one of the trio to another.

Willem, strolling from his retreat, crossed to the table, picked up a picture book, and in leisurely fashion mounted with it to the gallery landing that overlooked the room. There he threw himself on a settee between the bedroom doors and opened the book at random.

His lower lip quivered ever so little and his blue eyes were big with a troubled wonder. From time to time his glance would stray from the gaudy pages of the picture book down to Grimm in the room below. And each time the wonder in his eyes became tinged with a new sorrow.

Meantime, Peter Grimm's look of questioning, perplexed sympathy toward her tumult ridden self was becoming far too much for Mrs. Batholommey's jellylike self-control. The jelly began to quake—quite visibly.

"I was afraid," Peter went on kindly, "that something unpleasant might have happened. And I hoped perhaps I might be able——"

"Oh, no! No, no, no!" denied the utterly flustered woman. "I—I hope you are feeling well, Mr. Grimm. No—no—I don't mean that. I—I don't mean that I hope you are well. Of course not. I—that is——"

"Of course she hopes it," boomed her husband, coming to the rescue with heavy and uncertain cheeriness that rang as false as the ring of a leaden dollar. "And of course all of us hope it, dear Mr. Grimm. With all our hearts. And we wish you many, many years of life and——"

"Oh, indeed we do," chimed in Mrs. Batholommey. "And, as Dr. McPherson just said, there may perhaps be no reason,—with proper care—why you shouldn't——"

"A blundering rector must be put up with because of his cloth. But when it comes to a blundering rectorette, there ought to be a line drawn!"

It was McPherson who said it. He addressed no one, but seemed to be confining his heretical sentiments to the window seat. Also he spoke in a gruff undertone—that filled the room like far off thunder.

Peter Grimm flung himself into the breach, even before the wave of outraged red could gush to Mrs. Batholommey's shaking visage.

"Will you—will you have a glass of plum brandy?" he asked her, and then caught himself with the scared grin of a very guilty schoolboy.

"I thank you," she retorted, safe for the moment in the full majesty of Temperance. "I do not take such things. Perhaps you forget I am the President of our local W. C. T. U. and the——"

"The Little Brothers of the Artesian Well," added Grimm, "or whatever they call it. I remember. And I'm sorry. I wouldn't tempt you from your principles for the world. Forgive me. How about you, Pastor? A little drop of plum brandy, for—for—let's see, what is it St. Paul says about——?"

"Thank you, no," declined the rector, with an apprehensive gesture towards his wife.

"Oh, come, come!" urged Peter hospitably. "Why, the other evening when you dropped over here after the vespers, sir, you——"

"I only use it when absolutely needful for medicinal purposes," insisted the rector hurriedly. "Not to-day, I thank you."

"I believe," said Peter irrelevantly, "that St. Paul was a single man, was he not, Pastor?"

"I—I believe so. It is not definitely known. But why?"

"I was only wondering," mused Peter, "how he would have accounted to St. Pauline, or whatever his wife's name would have been, for what he wrote in favour of 'a little wine for—'"

"Oh," explained Mrs. Batholommey, still safe, and ever feeling safer, now that temperance was again the theme, "St. Paul referred to unfermented wine, you know. Every one ought to understand that. It is so hard to make people see the difference."

"One bottle would convince them," said Peter very gravely.

"No," Mrs. Batholommey corrected him with serene loftiness. "You do not quite get my point, dear Mr. Grimm. For instance, when the poets,—even good men like the late Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier—speak of 'wine,' they use the word of course in its poetical sense. They use it merely to typify——"

"Booze," growled McPherson.

"Good cheer," amended Mrs. Batholommey, withering him with a single frown. "And yet it is terribly misleading. I remember when we had the Walter Scott Tableaux and Recitations at the church last fall, and old Mr. Bertholf from Pompton was going to recite 'Lochinvar,' I had to suggest a change in the poem, lest the ignorant people in the village might get a wrong impression of dear Sir Walter Scott's principles. You remember the couplet occurs:

"'And now I have come with this lost love of mine
To tread one last measure, drink one cup of wine.'

"So I asked Mr. Bertholf to alter the words into something like this:

"'And now I have come with this beautiful maid
To tread one last measure,—drink one lemonade.'

"It left the poetry just as beautiful and it took away the dangerous reference to wine. Mr. Bertholf didn't like it very much, I'm afraid. But I insisted, and at last——"

"And at last," snarled McPherson, to whom the thought of any mutilation of his fellow Scotchman's verse was as sacrilege, "and at last, poor Bertholf got so mixed up that he clean forgot the silly rot you'd taught him. And when he came to that part of the poem, he stammered for a second and then blurted out:

"'And now I have come with my lovely lost mate
To tread one last measure, drink one whiskey straight.'"

"Yes," blazed Mrs. Batholommey, "and I have always believed you put him up to it."

"Well," shrugged the noncommittal McPherson, "if I had, it would at least be more in keeping with what Sir Walter intended than your straining an immortal poem through a lemon-squeezer."

"Andrew and I," announced Peter, hastening to pour oil on the troubled waters of conversation, by filling two glasses and handing one of them to McPherson, "are going to drink a toast to spooks."

"What?" squealed Mrs. Batholommey, in the accents of a rabbit that has been stepped on.

"To spooks—we——"

"Oh, how can you?" she gasped. "How can you? To spooks! You of all men! The very idea!"

"Mrs. Batholommey!" exclaimed Peter in real alarm, setting down his glass and moving toward her. "Something has happened! You are quite——"

"No, no!" she wailed helplessly.

"It is nothing, Mr. Grimm," soothed the rector. "Nothing at all, I assure you. My wife is a trifle overwrought this morning. Nothing of any consequence. I mean—that is, of course—we must all keep our spirits up, Mr. Grimm."

"Good Lord, deliver us!" intoned McPherson in mingled fervour and disgust.

"I know what it is," declared Peter with sudden enlightenment. "You've just come from a wedding! That's it! I know. Women love weddings better than anything on earth. They'll talk about it for months beforehand. They'll walk miles to attend one.—And they'll weep all the rest of the day. I don't know why. But they do it. I should be grateful, I suppose, that no women were ever called upon to shed tears at my wedding. But I hope, before so very long——"

Mrs. Batholommey had not in the very least caught the drift of the laughing speech whereby he had sought to put the poor woman at her ease. And now all at once, the last sagging vestige of self-control went from her.

"Oh, Mr. Grimm!" she moaned, breaking in upon his words. "You were always so kind to us. There never was a better, kinder, gentler man in all this world than you were."

"Than I was?" asked Peter bewildered. "Is my character changing or——?"

"No, no!" she corrected herself flounderingly. "I don't mean that. I mean—I meant——"

Her gaze fluttered helplessly about the big room and chanced at last to fall upon the reading boy, asprawl on the gallery bench above them.

"I meant," she plunged along, "what would become of poor little Willem if you——?"

This time her glance was caught and transfixed by McPherson's furious glare, much as a great flopping beetle might be pierced by the sting of a wasp. Mrs. Batholommey prided herself upon her tact. That glare nerved her to another effort.

"You see," she shrilled, wildly and awkwardly clambering out of the slough, "it's fearful he had such a 'M.'"

"Such a 'M'?" queried Peter. "What does that mean?"

With a warning glance toward the absorbed boy she shaped her lips noiselessly into the word "Mother."

"Oh!" said Peter. "I understand. But——"

"She ought to have told Mr. Batholommey or me," went on Mrs. Batholommey, climbing still higher on to solid ground, "who the 'F' was."

"'F'? What does that mean?"

And again the rabbit-like lips shaped themselves into a soundless word, this time 'Father.'

"Oh," grunted Peter, "the word you want isn't 'Father,' but 'Scoundrel!' Whoever he is——"

Willem flung aside his book and leaped to his feet as though his little body were galvanised. The others looked at him in guilty dread, fearing he had heard and had somehow understood their awkwardly veiled allusions to his parentage. But they were mistaken. A sound, far more potent to every normal child's ear than the fiercest thunders of morality, had reached his keen senses as he lounged up there. And a moment later they all heard it.

It was the braying of a distant but steadily approaching brass band. With it came a confused but ever louder medley of shouts, handclapping, raucous voices, and the higher tones of delighted children. As Kathrien came running in at one door, followed by Marta, and Frederik sauntered in from the office, Willem rushed down the stairway and into the window seat, where he sprang upon a chair and craned his neck to see the stretch of village street beyond. Nearer and louder came the music and the attendant vocal Babel.

"It's the circus parade!" shouted Willem. "The one they tell about in the advertisements and pictures on the fences. I didn't know the parade would start so early. There come some of them now. Oh, look! Oom Peter! Look! It's a clown! See! He's coming right toward us!"

The band in full brazen force was discoursing a "Dutch Ditties" waltz as it turned the corner above. And now, the voices of the barkers were heard in the land.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," came the leathern tones of one unseen announcer, "one hour before the big show begins in the main tent we will give a grand free balloon ascension!"

"Remember," adjured a second Unseen, "one price admits you to all parts of the big show!"

"Lemo—lemo—ice cold lemonade—five cents a glass!" shouted a youthful vender.

"You ought to quaff one beaker of it to Sir Walter Scott's memory, Mrs. Batholommey," observed McPherson.

But the din of the oncoming parade drowned his voice. The whole roomful, from Marta down to Willem, were thronging into the bay window. They were all children again. A touch of circus had renewed their youth as by the wave of a magic wand. Willem broke into a cry of utter joy and pointed ecstatically at the open window.

The next moment a clown, white and vermilion of face, clad in the traditional white, black, and scarlet motley of his tribe, had leaped cat-like upon the window sill and swept the room with his painted grin. In his hands he held a great bunch of variegated circus bills. Tossing a half-dozen of these at the feet of the all-absorbed spectators, he cried in high cracked falsetto:

"Well, well, WELL! Here we are again, good people! Billy Miller's Big Show! Larger—greater—grander than ever. Everything new! Come and see the wild animals! Hear the lions roar!"

Wheeling suddenly towards Mrs. Batholommey he pointed a whitened forefinger at her and broke into a truly frightful roar. The good lady jumped at least six inches from the ground.

"Steady, ma'am!" exhorted the clown. "I won't let him bite you! Come one, come all! Come see the diving deer! The human fly, Mademoiselle Zarella!" he added, addressing the rector. "She walks suspended from the ceiling! One ring and no confusion!" he confided to the delightedly smiling Peter. "And all for the price of admission! Remember the grand free exhibition one hour before the big show!"

He paused, catching sight of Willem for the first time. Now, it is a well-grounded tradition in one-ring circus life that no clown stays long in the business or scores a hit in it unless he is genuinely fond of children. Noting the all-absorbing bliss and adoration in Willem's wide eyes, the clown grinned at the boy in right brotherly fashion.

"Howdy!" said he cordially. "Shake!"

Marvelling, overcome with rapture, feeling as though the proffered honour was one far too wonderful to be real, Willem shyly extended his hand and met the friendly grasp of the flour-dusted fingers. The clown, striking an attitude, began in shrill, exaggerated diction, to chant the antiquated "Frog Opera" song:

"Uncle Rat has gone to town,—Ha-H'm!
Uncle Rat has gone to town,"

he sang on, addressing Willem,

"To buy his niece a wedding gown."

"Ha-H'm!" intoned Willem, delightedly; laughing aloud as he realised he was actually singing with a real live clown.

"What shall the wedding breakfast be?"

continued the clown, interrogating the equally youthful and delighted Peter Grimm. And this time more voices than Peter's and Willem's caught up the refrain:

"Ha-H'm!
Hard-boiled eggs and a cup of tea,"

sang the clown. And again from Willem and the rest came the answering:

"Ha-H'm!"

"Billy Miller's Big Show!" yelled the clown. "Come one, come all! So long, Sonny!"

He was gone. The others came back to earth. But Willem was still in the wonder clouds. It had been to him an experience to rehearse a thousand times, to dream over, to remember forever. Peter Grimm, reading the boy's thoughts as could only a heart that must ever be boyish, beckoned Willem to him, as Kathrien and Marta departed to their interrupted work in the dining-room and the rest looked half ashamed at their momentary excitement over so garish and trivial a thing.

"Willem!" called Grimm.

"Ja, Mynheer," answered the boy, coming slowly, his face still alight with his tremendous adventure of a moment ago.

"Willem," repeated Grimm, "you wouldn't care to go to that circus, would you? Wouldn't it be pretty stupid?"

"Stupid!" gasped the boy. "Oh!"

"Well," said Peter, "suppose you go, then?"

"Go? Really, Mynheer Grimm?"

"Go get the seats," ordered Grimm. "Here's the money. Get two front seats. Two. We'll both go. We'll make a night of it, you and I. We'll stay out till—till ten o'clock!"

The vision of this bliss was too much for Willem's English.

"Ekar, ekar na hat circus!" he babbled dazedly.

Then he rushed up impulsively to Peter and seized the big, kindly hand in both his own.

"Oh, Mynheer Grimm!" he squealed in ecstasy. "There ain't any one else like you in the world. And—and—when the other fellows laugh at your funny hat, I don't."

"What?" asked Grimm, perplexed. "Is my hat funny?"

The boy was vibrant with laughter, drunk with anticipation. But, momentarily straightening his glowing face with a cast of semi-gravity, he said:

"And—and—Mynheer Grimm—it's too bad you've got to die!"

CHAPTER VI

He paused. The electrified atmosphere generated by the three conspirators began to reach his non-sensitive brain. A quick glance at Mr. Batholommey and a second at the rector's wife confirmed his vague feeling that something was wrong. He turned back to Willem, in time to intercept a blighting scowl of warning the doctor was trying to flash to the boy.

"Willem," asked Grimm gently, "how did you happen to say such a queer thing just now? What made you think I'm going to die?"

A concerted and unintelligible interruption from the trio was voiced too late to prevent Willem's reply.

"He said so," replied the boy, pointing at McPherson.

Then he caught the doctor's annihilating frown. And, simultaneously the rector cried in stern admonition:

"Willem!"

Mrs. Batholommey, too, was making quite awful and wholly incomprehensible faces at him. Under the triple menace the boy wilted. Like every child, since Cain, he had a thousand times been reproved for things he had said or done in perfect innocence. In fact, the more unconscious the offence, the more dire was the reproof. Children do not reason in such matters. It is enough for them to know they have said or done the wrong thing; without stopping to discover why or how that thing chanced to be wrong.

The non-linguist traveller in a foreign land cannot read the "Keep off the Grass" or "No Thoroughfare" signs. But the policeman's threatening club has a universal language that he understands and intuitively obeys. So Willem (ignorant of death save as an empty name that vaguely carried a note of sorrow, and wholly unaware why he should not have imparted the news of Grimm's coming demise), saw he had said something very terrible. And a look of abject panic came into his face.

But Grimm's hand was still on his head,—gentle, caressing, infinitely tender in its touch.

"No, don't stop the boy," commanded Peter, meeting the variously anguished glances of the others with a half smile that began and ended in the suddenly widened eyes. "Don't stop him. Only children speak the truth nowadays. It used to be 'children and fools.' But fools have learned to tell fool-lies, and they have left children the monopoly of truth telling. Go on, Willem. You heard the doctor say that I am going to——?"

Willem's fragile little body was trembling from head to foot. Under Mrs. Batholommey's distorted glare and threatening noiseless mouthings his puny courage had gone to pieces. Big tears began to roll down his cheeks. And noting the child's terror, Grimm fell to soothing him.

"There, there, jounker," comforted Peter. "Don't let them frighten you. Oom Peter will stand by you. You haven't done anything wrong and nobody's going to scold you. Don't be scared."

Under the strangely gentle voice and the consoling touch of the rough, kindly hand, Willem's fears subsided. With Oom Peter on his side, he could brave the frowns of all Grimm Manor if need be. For who was so strong, so wise as Oom Peter?

Did not every one bend to his orders and come running to him for advice and aid, as troubled children seek out a loving father? The boy ceased to tremble. He looked up into Grimm's face for something that should confirm the words and the touch.

And he found it. The rugged old visage had never before been so kindly, so unruffled. And in the little eyes that could flash so obstinately and irritably, there was nothing but friendliness.

Yes—something more that the boy had never before seen. Something he could not read, but that seemed to draw him strangely close to the old man, and freed him of his last vestige of fear.

"Don't be scared, dear lad," repeated Grimm. "So you heard Dr. McPherson say I am going to die?"

"Yes, sir."

Grimm turned slowly to the doctor, who still stood glowering, red, speechless, furiously miserable.

"Andrew," asked Grimm quietly, "what did you mean?"

Before McPherson could speak, Grimm checked him with a move of the head and glanced down at the boy.

"Never mind just now," said he. "Willem didn't mean any harm in telling me. It just popped out, didn't it, Willem? The only person who never says the wrong thing at the wrong time is a deaf mute whose fingers are paralysed. We'll forget all about it. Now run along, lad, and get those circus tickets before all the best ones are gone. Front row seats, remember. We're going to have the finest sort of a spree, you and I. Hurry now."

"Ja, Oom Peter!" cried the boy, all laughter once more.

He snatched his cap from the rack, in his haste almost upsetting Grimm's antiquated tile that hung beside it; and, with a farewell shout, was gone. His feet padded joyously on the gravel outside; then silence fell again in the big room. It was Mr. Batholommey who broke the spell. Walking solemnly up to Peter, who stood looking with a sort of stunned wistfulness straight in front of him, the rector held out his hand.

"Good-bye, dear brave friend," he said, with an air gruesomely if unconsciously reminiscent of his burial service manner. "Any time you telephone for me, day or night, I'll run over immediately. God bless you, sir!" his rounded voice shaking uncontrollably. "I have never come to you in behalf of any worthy charity and been refused. You have set an example in upright living, in generosity, in true manliness, and in constant church attendance that should be an example to all my vestrymen and to the town at large. I have never seen a nobler man. Never. Good—good-morning."

He moved toward the door, winking very fast and clearing his throat. At the threshold he beckoned to his wife. But she had already borne down upon Peter.

"Mr. Grimm!" she sobbed. "The best—the kindest—the—the—Oh, I don't see how we are going to bear it."

"Dear Mrs. Batholommey," answered Grimm. "Please don't be so overcome. I may outlive you all. Nevertheless, I am grateful to your husband for letting me hear my funeral eulogy in advance, and to you for——"

"Oh, how can you make light of it?" she sobbed. "Yes, dear, I'm coming. Good-bye, Mr. Grimm."

Like a confused and somewhat elderly hen she scuttled off in her husband's wake, while Peter Grimm stared after the two with a half-amused, half-perplexed smile.

"Of all the wall-eyed, semi-anthropoid congenital idiots," roared McPherson as the door closed behind them, "those two are——"

"You're mistaken, Andrew," contradicted Grimm. "They're kind-hearted, good people, who spend their lives and their substance in helping others. If you and they can't get on together it's no one's fault. Any more than because fuchsias and sunflowers won't thrive in the same bed. Now calm down a bit, old friend, and tell me——"

"Nothing! It was nothing. Just nonsense. Don't give it another thought, Peter. You said, yourself, a while ago, that many a man who was given up by the doctors at twenty-five lives to be a hundred. And there is no reason on earth why you——"

"Don't!" urged Grimm. "I don't need that. I——"

"Don't fret yourself, Peter," insisted McPherson. "You mustn't get the idea that you are worse off than you really are. Don't get cold feet or let this thing worry you to death. You must live for——"

"Andrew!" chided Grimm, with tolerant reproof. "Are you so tangled up that you think you're talking to Willem instead of to a full-grown man? If it's got to be, it's got to be. And you were wrong not to tell me at once. That is the way with you doctors. You are so in the habit of dealing with hysterical women and hypochondriacs that you forget that a man is shaped by nature to bear the naked truth without having it rigged up beforehand in a lot of fluff to disguise its shape. I think I understand. I may live a while longer. And I may not. The same thing could be said of every one."

McPherson tried to speak, then turned and made blindly for the door.

"Wait a minute!" called Grimm.

McPherson halted. Peter crossed to where his friend stood. With an effort at his old-time whimsical banter he held out his hand.

"I just want to promise again, Andrew," he said, "that if there's anything in this spook business of yours, I'll come back. And I'll apologise. Good-bye and good luck."

McPherson wrung his hand, without speaking, and strode noisily out.