CHAPTER XII

"He was! If he were here, I'd say it to his face. The congregation sicked you after him. And now he's gone and you'll get nothing more. And they'll call you slow—slow and pokey! You'll see! To-morrow you'll wake up!"

"My dear!" expostulated her husband once more.

But Mrs. Batholommey paid no attention to his words or to the beseeching look that accompanied them. She waved an arm dramatically.

"Here's a man the rector spent half his time with—and for what? A watch fob!"

The ineffable scorn with which she pronounced these last words caused Mr. Batholommey to hang his head.

"You'll see!" she went on. "This will be the end of you! It's not what you preach that counts nowadays. It's what you coax out of the rich parishioners' pockets."

"Mrs. Batholommey!" thundered the clergyman, taking a step forward; but he might as well have tried to stem the ocean.

"The church needs funds to-day. Religion doesn't stand where it did, when a college professor is saying that—that—"—(here her voice broke)—"the Star of Bethlehem was only a comet."

The end of the sentence resolved itself into a veritable wail and she sat down quickly and subsided into her handkerchief.

"My dear!" reiterated the helpless husband.

"Oh!" she wailed through her tears, "if I said all the things I feel like saying about Peter Grimm"—(here it almost sounded as if she ground her teeth)—"well—I shouldn't be a fit clergyman's wife. Not to leave his dear friends a——"

Again her voice was muffled in the folds of the handkerchief, and Colonel Lawton took advantage of the temporary lull to put in a word.

"He wasn't liberal," he said, rising, "but for God's sake, Madam, think what he ought to have done for me after my patiently listening to his plans for twenty years! Mind, I'm not complaining, but what have I got out of it? A Bible!"

"Oh, you've feathered your nest, Colonel!" cried Mrs. Batholommey, recovering somewhat.

"I never came here," retorted Colonel Lawton spitefully, "that you weren't begging!"

"See here, Lawton," the clergyman interrupted truculently, "don't forget who you are speaking to!"

Colonel Lawton waved his hand patronisingly at the clergyman.

"That's all right, Parson. I know who I'm speaking to. We're all in the same boat—one's as good as another—when we're all up against a thing like this. If anything, you two are worse than I am, for you stand for better things. What would your congregation think of either of you if they could look into your hearts this moment and see 'em as they really are?"

"Really are—really are!" cried Mrs. Batholommey. "I'm not ashamed to have any one see my heart as it really is!"

(And Mrs. Batholommey was telling the truth, for she was a good woman at heart, and it was not her fault that she had a human desire for this world's goods for those she loved, for the church, and for herself.)

Here Frederik, who had watched the scene with much amusement at first, came forward through the increasing gloom. He was getting tired of the childish bickering.

"Well, well, well, I'm disgusted," he said, "when I see such heartlessness! He was putty in all your hands."

"Oh, you can defend his memory. You got the money!" cried Mrs. Batholommey, with asperity. "He liked flattery and you gave him what he wanted and you gave him plenty of it."

"Why not?" retorted Frederik calmly, getting a cigarette out of his case. "The rest of you were at the same thing—yes?"

He struck a match and lighted his cigarette as he continued in a disagreeable tone:

"And I had the pleasure of watching him hand out the money that belonged to me—to me," he repeated. "My money! What business had he to be generous with my money?"

Still talking, Frederik sat down at the desk.

"If he'd lived much longer, I'd have been a pauper. It's a lucky thing for me he di——"

Frederik had the grace to leave the word unfinished.

Mr. Batholommey broke the slight pause.

"Young man," he said solemnly, "it might have been better if Mr. Grimm had given all he had to charity—for he left his money to an ingrate."

The "ingrate" laughed derisively.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" he cried. "You amuse one! You don't know how amusing you are."

No one cared to add further to Frederik's amusement, so they all sat still. The room was now perfectly dark, except for an occasional flash of heat-lightning from the vanished storm.

Night had crept upon them unheeded, so intent had they been on their petty wrangling.

Finally Mrs. Batholommey got up and went towards the desk.

"Where is the miniature?" she demanded. "I don't want it—but I'll take it."

Frederik lighted a match, and by its flickering blaze found the discarded miniature lying face downward on the desk. Mrs. Batholommey snatched it from his fingers, and made her way back to the fireplace.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" laughed Frederik again.

"Rose, my dear," began Mr. Batholommey, "the min——"

"Sh!" interrupted Frederik.

There was a pause. Then he rose.

"Who came into the room?" he asked in a strange voice.

He lit a match and waved it slowly in the direction of the hall door. It was extinguished instantly as if the wind had blown it out. He lighted another, saying:

"We're sitting in the darkness like owls. Who came in?" he demanded again.

There was no answer as he peered around the room, holding the match toward first one corner and then another.

"I didn't hear any one," said the Colonel.

"Nor I," added Mrs. Batholommey.

"No," said Mr. Batholommey.

"I was sure some one came in," Frederik said in a strange voice.

"You must have imagined it," suggested Mr. Batholommey. "Our nerves are all upset."

"I'll get a light," Frederik said, starting toward the dining-room.

At that moment, Marta entered with the welcome lamps. She carried two of them, one already lighted, which she put upon the table. The other Frederik took quickly from her and carried to the chain-bracket over the desk. This he adjusted with Marta's help, and then lighted.

After which he glanced apprehensively about the room once more. Even under the reassuring flood of light his impression that some one had stolen in upon the dim-lit conference would not wholly vanish.

CHAPTER XIII

And so, at Frederik's frightened demand, "Who came into the room?" the Dead Man stood among his own again. Before him was the nephew he had loved. Nearby were the husband and wife whose follies and harmless affectations he had forgiven with a laugh of amusement, for the sake of their goodness and for the devotion they bore himself. Lounging in the chair that had been his own was the lawyer who had been his dear friend and adviser. The friends he had cared for, the nephew on whom his every hope had been set.

With a wistful half-smile, Peter Grimm surveyed the group.

And, as Marta brought in one lighted lamp and then bustled about lighting another, he stood in clear view of them all. Clad in the same old-fashioned garb with which they were so familiar, he was unchanged, save that all age and all care lines were wiped from his face.

He was not a wraith, no grisly spectre, no half-nebulous Shape. He was Peter Grimm, rugged, homespun, the man whose iron individuality had undergone and could undergo no change.

He stood there in the lamplight, plainly visible—to such as had eyes to see him.

The dog, with that sense which God gives to all animals and withholds from all humans, had had no more difficulty in recognising him than when Peter Grimm had walked the earth in the flesh.

The faculty which makes a sleeping dog awake, raise its head, wag its tail and follow with its eyes the movements of some invisible form that moves from place to place in a room,—which makes a flock of chickens scatter squawking and fluttering when no human being can discern cause for their flight—which makes a horse shy violently when travelling a patch of road, apparently barren of anything to alarm him,—which makes a cat suddenly arch its back and spit and strike at the Unseen, or else rub purringly against an invisible hand—this faculty made Peter Grimm very real to his blear-eyed, asthmatic old collie.

But the inmates of the room, being but human, had seen and heard nothing. Frederik, it is true, being in a constant state of nervous tension that rendered his senses less dense and earthy than usual, had fancied he heard—or felt—some one enter the room. But at the disclaimers of the rest, the notion vanished as such notions do. And the warm flood of lamplight dispelled whatever of the psychic may have brooded over the little group, bringing back their comfortable materialism with a rush.

Wherefore, in his old home and among his own, Peter Grimm stood unseen; that deprecatory half-smile on his square, ageless face.

The lighting of the lamps and Marta's noisy return to her own culinary domain served as signals to break up the group about the desk. Mr. Batholommey crossed the room and took his hat and coat from the rack, passing within a hand's-breadth of the smiling, expectant Peter Grimm as he did so.

"Well, Frederik," said the rector doubtfully by way of farewell, "I hope that you'll follow your uncle's example at least as far as our parish poor are concerned,—and keep on with some of his charities."

Mrs. Batholommey, dutifully following her husband to the rack and helping him on with his coat, turned to hear Frederik answer the question she and the rector had so often and so anxiously discussed during the past ten days. The heir did his best to settle their every doubt in the fewest possible words.

"I may as well tell you now, as any time," said he, "that you needn't look to me for any charitable graft at all. Your parish poor will have to begin hustling for a living now. I don't intend to waste good money in feeding what you Americans call 'a bunch of panhandlers.'"

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Batholommey, inexpressibly disappointed.

The smile died on Peter Grimm's face and the light of happy expectancy was gone from his eyes.

"I am very sorry, Frederik," said the rector stiffly, "not only that you can speak so of God's poor, but that you are not willing to continue your uncle's splendid philanthropies. It—it doesn't seem possible that he never told you how dear his charities were to him. Well," he broke off with a shrug, and glancing at his watch, "I've got thirty minutes to make a call before tea time."

"I must be toddling, too," said Colonel Lawton. "Are you going my way, Mr. Batholommey? It's queer, Frederik," he added, bidding his host good-bye, "it's queer—deucedly queer how things turn out. There's one thing certain: the old gentleman should have made a will. But it's too late now for us to grumble about that. By the way, what are you going to do with all his relics and family heirlooms, Frederik? Have you thought of it? I supposed, of course, you'd keep everything just as he left it. But from the way you've talked this afternoon, I wonder——"

"Heirlooms? Relics?" queried Frederik, puzzled. "Oh—you mean all this junk?" with a comprehensive hand wave that included Dutch clock, Dutch warming pans, Dutch bric-a-brac, and Dutch furniture. "This junk all over the house? Oh, I'll have it carted to the nearest ash heap. It isn't worth a red cent of any one's money."

Peter Grimm strode forward, his lips parted in quick protest. But Colonel Lawton was already answering, with an appraising look about the room:

"I don't know about that, Frederik. It may not be as worthless as you seem to think. Better let me send for a dealer to sort it over after you've gone on your honeymoon. I've heard that some people are fools enough to pay a lot of good money for this sort of antique trash."

"Not a bad idea," approved Frederik. "See what you can do about it, won't you? I want it cleared out. And if I can get rid of it and do it at a profit, too, why, all the better."

"If I could get that old clock," put in Mrs. Batholommey, the light of the bargain hunt shining in her large face, "I might consent to take it off your hands. Of course it isn't really worth anything. But——"

"I've an idea," replied Frederik, with charming dearth of civility, "that it's worth a lot more than you'd pay me for it."

"I hope," she snapped angrily as she glared at Frederik, "that your poor dear uncle is where he can see his mistake now!"

"I am where I can see several," said the Dead Man to ears that could not hear.

"Do you know," pursued Mrs. Batholommey, whose depths of professional sweetness had been turned faintly sub-acid by the events of the day—"do you know, Frederik, what I would like to say to your uncle if I could just once stand face to face with him, this very minute?"

"Yes," smiled Peter Grimm sadly, as he looked deep into her eyes, "I know."

"I should say to him——" began Mrs. Batholommey.

Then she checked herself as at some impulse she herself did not understand, and finished somewhat lamely:

"No, I wouldn't say it, either. He's dead. And we're told we must speak no ill of the dead. Though, for my part, I never could see what right we gain to immunity just by dying. And—oh, by the way, Henry," she broke off as her husband and the lawyer passed out of the vestibule, "Kathrien expects you back for supper. Don't forget, will you, dear? Good-night, Colonel Lawton."

She followed them, closed the front door behind them, and bustled off to look after the arrangements for supper.

Frederik yawned, lighted a cigarette, and sauntered out into the office, Peter Grimm watching him with infinitely sad reproach in his luminous eyes.

Then, left alone in the room he had loved, the Dead Man looked about him at the dear old bits of furniture and ornaments that had meant so much to him and whose fate he had just heard weighed between auctioneer's hammer and rubbish heap.

He moved across to the rack, as if by lifelong instinct, and hung his antique hat on its accustomed peg. The simple, everyday action brought him so vividly close to older days that, as Marta pottered in with another newly filled lamp, he accosted her.

"Marta!" he called, as she gave no sign of recognition to his kindly nod and smile.

She set down the lamp in its place on the piano, crossed to the pulley-weight clock, and noisily wound it. As the old woman started back toward her kitchen, the Dead Man put himself once more in her way.

"Marta!" said he, then more loudly and peremptorily, "Marta!"

She passed within an inch of his outstretched hand and entered the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. Peter Grimm stared blankly after his housekeeper.

"I seem to be a stranger in my own house," he murmured. "My friends pass me by. Their gross eyes cannot see me. Their gross ears will not hear me. But—Lad knew me. He came to meet me, wagging his tail just as he used to. I—I remember I've more than once noticed his going to meet other people like that. People I couldn't see in those days."

Frederik lounged back from the office, cigarette in mouth. He took out his watch, compared it with the clock on the wall, slipped it back into his pocket, and was crossing to the outer door when the telephone bell on the desk jangled.

Frederik laid down his cigarette, seated himself at the desk, and picked up the receiver.

"Hello!" he called.

At the reply, he glanced around hastily, to make sure he was not likely to be overheard. Then, sinking his voice almost to a whisper and speaking with a nervous, almost guilty eagerness, he answered:

"Yes. Yes. This is Mr. Grimm. Mr. Frederik Grimm. I've been waiting all day to hear from you, Mr. Hicks. How are you? Wait one moment, please."

He rose, crossed the room, closed the door into the dining-room,—the only door that had been open,—glanced up into the bedroom gallery to make certain it was empty, then hurried back to the telephone.

"Yes," said he. "Go ahead."

There was a brief pause while he listened. Then he replied, in a tone of laboured indifference:

"Oh, no. You're quite mistaken. I am not 'eager to sell.' Not at all. As a matter of fact," he continued unctuously, "I much prefer to carry out my dear uncle's wishes and keep the business in the family. You must surely remember how determined he was that it should be kept on.—What?—'If I could get my price,' eh? That's different, of course. It puts a new aspect on the whole affair.—What? Oh, well, an offer such as that deserves careful thought. I could not decline it offhand.—No, I admit it is very tempting.—'Talk it over?' Certainly."

He paused, then went on in answer to a query from the other end of the wire:

"To-morrow? No, I'm afraid not. You see, I'm going to be married to-morrow. A man does not want to be bothered with business deals on his wedding day.—No, the next day won't do, either, I'm afraid. You see, we are sailing directly for Europe. Thank you. Yes, I deserve all the congratulations you can offer me.—What?—Very well. This evening, then. That will suit me perfectly. You're in New York, I suppose? What time will it be convenient to you to get to Grimm Manor?—What?—Yes, that's all right. No. Not here at the house. I'll meet you at the hotel. The tavern.—Yes, I'll be there promptly.—What?"

He listened a moment, then laughed in evident, if subdued, amusement.

"So the dear old gentleman used to tell you his plans never failed, did he?" he questioned. "Yes, I've heard the same boast from him hundreds of times. That's one reason why I want the deal kept quiet till it's settled. So I asked you to meet me at the tavern instead of here at the house. I don't want it thought by other people that I'd run counter to his plans in any way. God rest his soul! Hey? 'What would he say if he knew?' I hate to think. He could express himself very forcibly when his dear, stubborn old will was crossed. You may remember that. Oh, well, it's life. Everything must change."

There was a roll of thunder. At the same instant the windows flared pink-white with lightning. A flash of electricity ran purring and crackling along the telephone itself.

Frederik, with a sharp cry of surprise, dropped the instrument, and squeezed his electrically shocked arm. Then gingerly he picked up the telephone, replaced the receiver, and turned away toward the window seat.

Peter Grimm stood eyeing the telephone as if the man who had so lately been at the other end of the wire were directly in front of him.

"You don't know it, Hicks," said the Dead Man quietly, "but you will never carry this plan of yours through. We are going to meet very soon, you and I."

As if in response to his strange prophecy, the telephone jangled once more. Frederik returned to the desk and put the receiver to his ear.

"Hello!" he called. "Oh, it's you, Mr. Hicks? No, they didn't cut us off. I thought you were through.—What?—A little louder, please. I can't hear you very well.—What?—You're feeling ill? Oh, I'm sorry.—What?—Oh, yes, it will do just as well to send your lawyer instead, if you find you're too sick to make the journey. Your lawyer will be empowered to attend to everything in your name, I suppose?—Good.—Then we can close the deal to-night. At the hotel and at the same time. All right. What did you say his name was?—Shelp?—All right. Good-bye. I hope you'll feel much better in the morning, Mr. Hicks."

He relighted his cigarette, humming a little tune under his breath as he walked from the desk. His narrow face was very content.

"And that's the boy I loved and trusted!" said Peter Grimm, half aloud, watching Frederik take his hat and umbrella from the rack and leave the house. "I wonder if I am to unearth many more of my mistakes. I come upon a new one at every turn."

His wandering gaze rested on the door of Kathrien's room, in the gallery above. His lips parted in the old whimsical smile. Lifting his voice, he gave the odd call that had for years been a signal to Kathrien of his presence in the house and his desire to see her.

"Ou-oo!" rang out the familiar cry.

And, before its echoes could die away, Kathrien was out of her room and at the stairhead. She stood there an instant, dazed, wondering, like some one half-awakened from heavy sleep.

Looking down into the room below, she slowly descended the stairs.

"I thought some one called me," she said.

And though she spoke the words in her own brain and not from the lips, Peter Grimm heard and answered her.

"You did," said he. "I called you."

Filled with a sense that she was not alone, yet seeing and hearing no one, she came down into the seemingly vacant room. And, still without words, she said:

"I thought I heard a voice like—like——"

"Yes," answered the Dead Man again, "you wanted me, little girl. That's why I have come. There, there!" he soothed, as she stood with troubled face trying to formulate and understand the strange sensation that had suddenly taken possession of her. "Don't worry, Katje. It'll come out all right. We'll arrange things very differently. I've come back to——"

She moved away, unhearing. She passed unseeing from the loving outstretched arms.

"Katje!" he called tenderly.

But she did not turn at the loving appeal in his soundless voice.

"Oh, Katje! Katje!" he pleaded, following her. "Can't I make my presence known to you? Oh, don't cry!"

For the tears had welled up, unbidden, in her eyes.

And this time his words, in a vague, roundabout way, seemed to reach her understanding.

"Oh, well," she sighed, drying her eyes. "Crying doesn't help."

"Ah!" exclaimed Peter Grimm eagerly. "Good! Good! She hears me! Smile, little girl! Smile, I say."

A trembling ghost of a smile played about her sad lips.

"That's right!" he encouraged. "Smile! Smile! You haven't smiled before since I—since I found there was a place a million times happier and lovelier and more wonderful than this world that I left. Listen, little girl! Listen, Katje, and try to understand me. There are no dead. We never really die. We couldn't if we tried to. See the gardens out there. Look!"

As if in response to his words, Kathrien's half-smiling face was turned toward the flowering garden beds that stretched away on every hand, just outside the window.

"See the gardens," he went on, glad at his own seeming success in catching and holding her attention. "They die. But they come back all the better for it. All the fresher and younger and more beautiful. What people call death is nothing more than a nap. We wake from it freshened—rested—made over again. It's a wonderful sleep that people fall into, old and slow and tired out. And they spring up from it like happy children tumbling out of bed,—ready to frolic through another world. It is as foolish and wrong to mourn for people who fall into that dear sleep as to mourn for the children when they close their eyes at the end of the day. There is no death. There are no dead. It is all rest and wonder and beauty and perfect bliss. So stop being sad for me, my own little girl!

"There!" he cried in triumph, as the smile deepened on her pale face. "You're happier already! And you begin to understand me. You can hear what I am saying. Because no sin, no grossness has ever shut your ears to all but earthly sounds. Now listen to me carefully: Katje, I want you to break that silly, wicked promise I wheedled you into making. I want you to break it. You mustn't ruin your life—and James's—by marrying Frederik. It would mean misery for every one. Most of all for you, little girl. That's why I came here. To undo the harm that my blindness and obstinacy brought about. When that is settled I can take my journey back in peace. I can't go until you break that promise. And—and oh, I long to go, Katje! Katje!" his voice rising in yearning entreaty, as the smile faded from her face and her big eyes once more filled. "Isn't my message any clearer to you?"

"Oh," sighed Kathrien, half aloud. "I'm so alone—so alone!"

"Alone?" he echoed. "You are not alone, Katje. I'm here. Can't you feel my presence? And then there's your mother. The mother you were too little to remember. I have met her, Katje. I have met your mother. She knew me at once. After all those years. 'You are Peter Grimm!' she said. I told her you had a happy home here. And she said she knew that. Then I told her about the future I had arranged, and the plans I'd made for you and Frederik. And she said: 'Peter Grimm, you have overlooked the most important thing in the world:—Love! Give her the right to the choice of her lover. It is her right.' Then it came over me all at once that I had made a terrible mistake. That I had been presumptuous and had tried to play Providence and shape the future of another. At that moment, Katje, you called to me. And I came back to show you the way."

He moved nearer to her.

"Your mother," he whispered, bending over the girl as she sank into a chair by the fire, her eyes dreaming and full of a new joy, "your mother told me to lay my hand on your dear head and give you her blessing. And she said I must tell you she will be with you,—close—close to you—in heart and thought, until the day shall come when she can hold you in her arms. You and your loved husband."

Kathrien's dreamy gaze strayed from the fire-flicker on the hearth to the office door, on whose farther side she knew Hartmann was at work.

"Yes," smiled Peter Grimm, noting her glance. "You and James. And the message ended in this kiss."

He touched his lips to her forehead. And, at the unfelt contact, the light again sprang into her eyes.

"Can't you see I'm trying to help you, Katje?" he begged. "Can't you even hope? Come, come! Hope! Why, anybody can hope. It is the very easiest and most natural thing on earth. Especially when one is young—as you and I are. What is Youth but perpetual Hope?"

The light in her eyes deepened. Her look strayed again to the closed office door. She rose and took a step toward it, then turned, passed her hand caressingly over the flowers on the desk, and moved over to the piano.

She seated herself on the music stool and, for the first time in ten endless days, let her fingers stray over the keys. In a hushed little voice she began to sing:

"The bird so free in the heavens
Is but the slave of the nest.
For all things must toil as God wills it,
Must laugh and toil and rest.
The rose must bloom in the garden,
The bee must gather its store.
The cat must watch the mousehole,
And the dog must guard the door."

"Oh!" she broke off in sudden self-reproach. "How can I sit here singing,—at a time like this!"

"Sing!" urged the Dead Man. "Why not? Why not at a time like this as well as at any other time? Is it because you are afraid you are not being sad enough at losing me? You haven't lost me. Nothing is ever lost. The old uncle you loved doesn't sleep out in the churchyard dust. That is only a dream. He is here—alive! More alive than ever he was. A thousandfold more alive. All his age and weaknesses and faults are gone. Youth is glowing in his heart. He is bathed in it. It radiates from him. Eternal Youth that no one still on earth can know. Oh, little girl of mine, if only I could tell you what is ahead of you! It's the wonderful secret of the Universe. And you won't hear me? You won't understand?"

Still smiling, but without turning toward the loving, eager Spirit close beside her, Kathrien was looking out into the fragrant June dusk. Peter Grimm shrugged his shoulders.

"I must try some other way of making you hear," said he.

He looked up at the closed door of Willem's sick room for a moment, then nodded.

"Here comes some one," he announced, with the old whimsical twist of his lips, "who will know all about it. The secrets of the other world are as plain as day to him. He has told me so himself."

CHAPTER XIV

"Better," answered McPherson. "He's dropped off to sleep again. I'm still a bit puzzled about his case. It's——"

"Andrew! Andrew!" interrupted the Dead Man, almost fiercely. "I've got a message to deliver, but I can't get it across. This sort of thing is your own beloved specialty. Now's your chance. The chance you've always been longing for. Tell her I don't want her to marry Frederik! Tell her I——"

"A puzzling condition," continued McPherson, unhearing. "I can't quite grasp the meaning——"

"What meaning?" demanded Peter Grimm. "Mine? Try again. Tell her I don't want her to——"

"But," went on McPherson, drawing out pad and fountain pen, "I'll leave this prescription for one of the gardeners to take over to the druggist's. I'll leave it as I go out. I'll be back in—Why, what's up, Kathrien? What has happened? Oh, you've thought it over, eh? That's good. That's the way it should be. I left you all tears and now I find you all smiles. It——"

"Yes," answered Kathrien, half ashamed at her own oddly changed spirits. "I am happier for some reason. Much, much happier than I've been for days and days. I've—I've had such a strange feeling this past few minutes!"

"Have, eh?" asked McPherson curiously. "H'm! So have I. It's in the air, I suppose. I've been as restless as a hungry mouse. Something, for instance, seemed to draw me downstairs here. I can't explain it."

"I can," exulted Peter Grimm. "I'm beginning to be felt!"

"Doctor," hesitated Kathrien, looking nervously about her into the dimmer corners of the lamplit room, "just a little while ago, I—I thought I heard Oom Peter call me.—I was upstairs in my room. And it seemed to me I could hear that dear old call he used to give. It was so vivid, so distinct, so real! It was my imagination, of course. I'm so used to hearing Oom Peter's voice in this room that sometimes I forget for a moment that he isn't here. But—but some one must have called me. I couldn't have imagined it all. Isn't it strange to hear a call like that and then look around and find no one is there?"

"It is a phenomenon well recognised in modern science," affirmed McPherson. "I could cite you a hundred instances of it. Not all from imaginative persons either, Kathrien!" he added solemnly. "I have the firm conviction that in a very short time I shall hear from Peter!"

"I hope so," sighed the Dead Man in whimsical despair.

"He made the compact I told you about," continued McPherson, "and Peter Grimm never broke his word. He will come back. Be sure of that. But what I want is some positive proof,—some absolute test to prove his presence when he comes. Poor old Peter! Bless his kind, obstinate heart! If he keeps that compact with me and comes back, do you know what I shall ask him first?"

"You poor, blind, deaf, old Scotchman!" laughed Peter Grimm. "Open your eyes and your ears! You are like the man who lay down at the edge of the river and died of thirst."

"What would you ask him first, Doctor?" queried the girl as McPherson paused with dramatic effect, awaiting the question.

"First of all," said the doctor, "I shall ask him: 'Peter, in the next world does our work go on just where we left it off here?'"

"Well," returned Peter Grimm thoughtfully, "that question is rather a poser, isn't it?"

"It is a difficult question to answer, I admit," mused McPherson, following what he deemed to be the trend of his own thoughts. "I realise that."

"You heard me?" cried the Dead Man, with sudden excitement. "You heard? Come! We're getting results at last, you and I!"

"Results," murmured the doctor abstractedly, "are——What was I saying? Oh, yes. In the life-to-come, for instance, am I to be a bone-setter and is he to keep on being a tulip man?"

"It stands to reason, Andrew, doesn't it?" suggested Peter Grimm. "What chance would a beginner have with a fellow who knew his business before he was born? Hey?"

With the merrily victorious air that he had ever assumed when he had scored a telling point in their old-time discussions, Peter surveyed the doctor.

"I believe, Katje," mused McPherson after a moment's consideration, "that it is possible to have more than one chance at our life work. It never occurred to me before, but——"

"There!" exclaimed the Dead Man. "You caught that! Now, why can't you get that message about Kathrien's marriage? Try, man! Try!"

"Kathrien," said McPherson, suddenly shifting from conjecture to everyday conditions, "have you thought over what I said to you about this marriage with Frederik?"

"He did get it!" muttered Peter Grimm.

"Yes," rejoined Kathrien, "I have thought it over, Doctor. And I thank you with all my heart. But——"

"Well?"

"I shall go on with it. I shall be married, just as Oom Peter wished me to. I shan't go back on my promise."

McPherson growled in futile disgust.

"Don't give up, Andrew!" exhorted Peter Grimm. "Don't give up! Make her see it your way. A girl can always change her mind. Try again. Andrew!"

The last word was almost a cry. For McPherson, with a shrug of his shoulders, accepted defeat in surly silence and was tramping across to the hat rack, where he began to gather up his outdoor raiment.

"Oh, Andrew! Andrew!" he pleaded, following him up. "Don't throw away the fight so easily! Tell her to——"

"Good-bye, Kathrien," said the doctor at the threshold. "If you choose to make toad-pie of your life, it's no business of mine. I'll drop in later for a good-night look at Willem."

"Good-night, Doctor," answered Kathrien, "and—thank you again."

With a wordless grunt, McPherson went out, leaving Peter Grimm staring hopelessly after him.

"I see I can't depend on you, Andrew," murmured the Dead Man, "in spite of your psychic lore and your belief in my return. Why is it they can all understand—or half understand—the unimportant things I say, and yet be deaf to my message? It is like picking out the simple words in a foreign book and then not know what the story is about. Marta—Kathrien—McPherson—they all fail me. I must find some other way."

He turned slowly toward the door of the office. The door almost immediately opened and James Hartmann came into the room. The young man had a pen behind his ear and a half-written memorandum of sales in his hand. He had evidently risen from his work and entered the living-room on an unplanned impulse.

Kathrien had seated herself in a chair by the fire and was gazing drearily into the red embers.

"Look at her, lad!" breathed Peter Grimm. "She is so pretty—so young—so lonely! Look! There are kisses tangled in that gold hair of hers where it curls about her forehead and neck. Hundreds of them. And her lips are made for kisses. See how dainty and sweet and heart-broken she is. She is dreaming of you, James. Are you going to let her go? Why, who could resist such a girl? You're not going to let her go! You feel what I am saying to you. You won't give her up. She loves you, boy. And you realise now that you can't live without her. Speak! Speak to her!"

"Miss Kathrien!" said Hartmann earnestly; then halted, frightened at his own temerity.

The girl looked up quickly. At sight of him she flushed and rose impulsively to face him.

"Oh, James!" she cried. "I'm so glad—so glad to see you!"

As their hands met the man's hesitancy fled.

"I felt that you were in here," said he. "All at once I seemed to know you were here and alone. And before I realised what I was doing, I came in. I didn't mean to."

"Didn't mean to come and see me while you were here?" she echoed in reproach. "Why not?"

"For the same reason I didn't stay when I was here before. I——"

"Why did you go away that time?" she demanded. "Why did you go without a word of good-bye to—to any of us?"

"Tell her, boy," adjured Peter Grimm. "Don't mind my feelings."

"Your uncle sent me away," blurted Hartmann, "but it was partly at my own request."

"Oom Peter sent you away? Why?"

"I told him the truth again."

"Oh! One of your usual hot arguments that used to worry me so? I remember how excited you both used to get. Was it about the superiority of potatoes to orchids this time?"

"No. The superiority of one person to the whole world."

But she did not catch his meaning. She was looking up at the big athletic body and the clean, strong face, with an absurd longing to creep into the man's arms for shelter as might a tired child.

"It's so good to see you back," she said.

"I'm only here for a few hours," he answered. "Just long enough to put one or two details of the business to rights. Then I'm going away again—this time for good."

"No! Where are you going?"

"Father and I are going to try our luck on our own account. I've a few thousands from a legacy that came to me last month from my grandmother. And father has saved a tidy little sum, too. We're going to start in with small fruits and market gardening. We haven't decided just where."

"It will be so strange—so different—so lonely and empty when I come back," she mourned, "with Uncle and you both gone. It seems as if the blessed old home was all broken up. It can never be the same again. I don't know how I can muster courage to come into this house after——"

"It will be easier after the first wrench. Everything is easier than we think it's going to be. And, Kathrien," he went on, steadying his voice by a supreme effort, "I hope you'll be happy—beautifully happy."

Neither of them realised that her hand had somehow slipped into his and was resting very contentedly in the big, firm grasp.

"Whether I'm happy or not," replied Kathrien miserably, "it's the only thing to do. Please try to believe that. Oh, James, he died smiling at me—thinking of me—loving me. And just before he went he had begged me to marry Frederik. I shall never forget the wonderful look of happiness in his eyes when I promised. It was all he wanted in life. He said he'd never been so happy before. He smiled up at me for the very last time, with his dear face all alight. And there he sat, smiling, after he was gone. The smile of a man leaving this life absolutely satisfied—at peace!"

"I know. Marta told me. I——"

"It's like a hand on my heart, hurting it almost unbearably when I question doing anything he wanted. It has always been so with me ever since I was a baby. I never could bear to go against his wishes. And now that he's gone—why, I must keep my word. I couldn't meet him in the Hereafter if I didn't keep that last sacred promise to him. I couldn't say my prayers at night. I couldn't speak his name in them. Oom Peter trusted me. He depended on me. He did everything for me. I must do this for him."

"No, no!" exclaimed the Dead Man. "You are wrong. Tell her so, James!"

"I wanted you to know this, James," finished Kathrien, "because—because——"

A gush of tears blotted out Hartmann's tense, wretched face and choked her hesitating utterance.

"Have you told Frederik that you don't love him?" asked Hartmann, forcing himself to resist the yearning to gather her into his arms and kiss away her tears. "Does he know?"

She nodded, her face buried in her hands.

"And Frederik is willing to take you like that? On those terms?"

Another dumb nod of the pretty, fluffy little head, with its face still convulsed and hidden.

"The yellow dog!" burst forth Hartmann.

"You flatter him," sadly assented Peter Grimm.

"Look here, Kathrien," hurried on Hartmann, "I didn't mean to say a word of this to-day,—or ever. Not a word. But the instant I came in here from the office just now, something made me change my mind. I knew all at once I must talk to you. You looked so little, so young, so helpless, all huddled up there by the fire. Kathrien, you've never had to think for yourself. You don't know what you are doing in going on with this blasphemous, loveless marriage. Why, dear, you are making the most terrible mistake possible to a woman. Marriage with love is often a tragedy. Without love it is a hell. A horror that will deepen and grow more dreadful with every year."

"Do you suppose I don't understand that?" she whispered. "Don't make it harder for me."

"Your uncle was wrong to ask such a sacrifice. Why should you wreck your life to carry out his pig-headed plans?"

"Oh!"

"Not strong enough yet," advised Peter Grimm. "Go on, lad."

"You are going to be wretched for the rest of your days, just to please a dead man who can't even know about it," insisted Hartmann. "Or if he does know, you may be certain he sees the affair more sanely by this time and is bitterly sorry he made you promise."

"He assuredly is," acquiesced Peter Grimm. "I wish I'd known in other days that you had so much sense. Go ahead!"

"You mustn't speak so, James," reproved Kathrien, deeply shocked. "I——"

"Yes, he must," contradicted the Dead Man. "Go on, James. Stronger!"

"But I must speak so!" declared Hartmann, swept on by a power he could not understand. "I'll speak my mind. I don't care how fond you were of your uncle or how much he did for you. It was not right for him to ask this sacrifice of you. The whole thing was the blunder of an obstinate old man!"

"No! You mustn't!"

"I loved him, too," said Hartmann. "As much in my own way, perhaps, as you did. Though he and I never agreed on any subject under the sun. But, in spite of all my affection for him, I know and always knew he was an obstinate old man. Obstinate as a mule. It was the Dutch in him, I suppose."

Peter Grimm nodded emphatic approval.

"Do you know why I was sent away?" rushed on Hartmann, still upheld and goaded along by that incomprehensible impulse. "Do you know why I quarrelled with your uncle?"

"No."

"Because I told him I loved you. He asked me. I didn't tell him because I had any hopes. I hadn't. I haven't now. Oh, girl, I don't know why I'm talking to you like this. I love you. And my arms are aching for you."

He stepped toward her, arms out as he spoke. She retreated, frightened, to where Peter Grimm stood surveying the lover with keen approbation.

"No, no!" she warned. "You mustn't, James. It isn't right—don't."

Her next backward step brought her close to Peter Grimm. And the Dead Man, with a swift motion of his hand, waved her forward into her lover's outstretched arms.

Through no conscious volition of her own, Kathrien sped straight onward, unswerving, unfaltering into the strong circle of those arms for whose warm refuge she had so guiltily felt herself longing.

"No!" she panted, in dutiful resistance.

But the negation was lost against Hartmann's broad breast as he pressed her closely to him.

"I love you!" he repeated over and over in a daze of rapture.

Then in awed wonder:

"And you love me, Kathrien!"

"No, no—don't make me say it, dear heart!"

"I shall make you say it. It is true. You do love me!"

"What matter if I do?" wailed the girl. "It wouldn't change matters."

"Kathrien!"

"Please don't say anything more. I can't bear it."

Gently, reluctantly, she sought to release herself from that wonderful embrace. But Hartmann now needed no Spirit Guest to urge him to hold his own.

"I'm not going to let you go," he cried, kissing her white, upturned face till the red glowed back into it. "I won't give you up, Kathrien. I won't give you up!"

"You must," she insisted, struggling more fiercely against herself than against him. "You must, dear. I can't break my promise to Oom Peter. I——"

The front door opened. The lovers sprang apart. Frederik entered, glancing quickly from one to the other of them.

"Oh!" he observed. "You in here, Hartmann? I thought I'd find you in the office. I've some unopened mail of my uncle's to glance over. Then I'll join you there."

Hartmann took the broad hint, nodded, and left the room. Frederik's eyes followed him steadily until the door closed behind the young intruder. Then he turned to where Kathrien crouched, panting, bewildered, trembling. Frederik abruptly went over to her, and, before she could guess his purpose, kissed her full on the lips.

Involuntarily the girl recoiled as from some loathly thing.

"Don't!" she exclaimed, fighting for her shaken self-control. "Please don't!"

"Why not?" he snapped.

She did not answer.

"Has Hartmann been talking to you?"

She moved toward the stair-foot.

"Just a moment, please," Frederik interposed, hurrying forward to catch up with her before she could gain the safety of the stairway.

"Hartmann has been talking to you. What has he been saying?"

He had seized her hand as she made to mount the stairway. As she did not reply to his question, he repeated it, adding:

"Do you really imagine, Kathrien, that you care for that—fellow?"

"I'd rather not talk about it, please, Frederik," she pleaded.

"No? But it is necessary. Do you——"

She broke away from his suddenly rough grip and fled up the stairway to her own room. As the door shut behind her, Frederik, with clouded face and working lips, strode over to the desk. He passed close by Peter Grimm. But the Dead Man was still staring blankly after Kathrien.

"Oh, Katje," he muttered, "even Love could not get my message to you! Less influence would be needed to change the fate of a nation than the mind of one good woman. I think a good woman—a good woman,—is more stubborn than anything else in the Universe. Not excepting myself. When she has made up her mind to do right,—which invariably means to sacrifice herself and thereby make as many other people wretched as possible—not even a Spirit from the Other World can influence her."

With a despairing shrug of the shoulders he turned toward his nephew, and his face hardened. Frederik had seated himself at the desk. He had drawn out the little handful of personal letters that had arrived that afternoon for Peter Grimm and those that Mrs. Batholommey had put into the drawer for safe keeping.

One letter after another Frederik cut open, glanced over, and either put back into the drawer or laid under a paperweight on the desk. Peter Grimm crossed to the opposite side of the desk and stood looking down at him with set face and sad, reproving gaze.

"Frederik Grimm," said the Dead Man at last, his voice low but infinitely impressive, "my beloved nephew! You sit there opening my mail with the heart of a stone. You are saying to yourself: 'He is gone; there will be fine times ahead.' But there is one thing you have forgotten, Frederik: The Law of Reward and Punishment. Your hour has come—to think!"

Frederik, unheeding, continued to open, read, and sort the letters before him.

At the Dead Man's last words, his nephew picked from the heap a blue envelope, ripped it open, and pulled out the enclosures:—a single sheet of blue paper and a cheap photograph.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" he babbled over and over, foolishly, staring from letter to photograph. "Here's luck! What luck it is! Anne Marie to my uncle! Lord! If he'd lived to read it! If he had read it! Out I'd have been kicked! One—two—three—Augenblick! Out into the street! Oh, what unbelievable luck! If she'd written to him ten days earlier! Ten little days!"

His hand shaking, he picked up the letter again, spread it wide, and began to read it, Peter Grimm standing behind him, looking over the reader's shoulder.

"Dear Mr. Grimm," the letter ran, "I have not written because I can't help Willem. And I am ashamed. Don't be too hard upon me, sir, in your thoughts. At first I often went hungry. And then the few pennies I had saved for him were spent. Now I see that I can never hope to get him back. Willem is far better off with you. I know he is. But, oh, how I wish I could just see him again! Once. Perhaps I could come there in the night time and no one would know——"

"Oh!" breathed Peter Grimm, between tight clenched teeth. "The pity of it! The pity of it!"

"Who's that?" cried Frederik, looking up with a start of terror from his perusal of the letter.

The young man peered about the shadows beyond the radius of the lamp, a nervous dread at his heart.

"Who's in the room!" he demanded, glancing behind him.