It was a blanketed man upon a stretcher, carried by a doctor and a priest.

The face was muffled so that the idlers could not make it out; and when they inquired, they received no answer from the carriers, who pursued their course impassively down the runway to the water's edge and up the gang-plank to the deck.

When the boat had gone, and the last faint cough of its towering stacks had died away, Father Barnum turned to his friends: "He has gone away, not for a day, but for all time.

He is a strange man, and some things he said I could not understand.

At first I feared greatly, for when I told him what had occurred--of Necia's return and of her marriage--he became so enraged I thought he would burst open his wounds and die from his very fury; but I talked a long, long time with him, and gradually I came to know somewhat of his queer, disordered soul.