He now followed at too great a distance for recognition in the deepening twilight, and saw the young people enter a confectionery shop, but observed, with increased uneasiness, that Miss Mayhew parted from them and went to an adjacent drug-store. She soon joined the party again, however, and they all apparently started homeward. Van Berg at once determined to go to this drug-store and learn, if possible, if there were anything to confirm the horrible suspicion that crossed his mind. He remembered that despair and desperate deeds often went together, and the daily press had taught him how many people, with warped and ungoverned moral natures, place their troubles beyond remedy by the supreme folly of self-destruction. By a considerable detour through a side street, he reached the store unperceived, and found the druggist rather disquieted himself. "Are you staying at Burleigh's?" he asked. "I am," Van Berg replied. "Do you know a young lady boarding there with large dark eyes and auburn hair?" "I do." "Is there--is there anything wrong about her?" "Why should there be? Why do you ask?" "She has just been in here, and she looked sick and strangely, and all she wanted was a large phial of laudanum. Somehow her looks and purchase have made me uneasy. I never saw so white a face in my life, and she seemed weak and very tired. If she's sick, how comes it she's walking to the village? Besides, she seemed to have very little to do with the party she joined after leaving here." Van Berg controlled himself only by a powerful effort, and was very glad that the brim of his soft hat concealed the pallor of his own face. He managed to say quietly: "The young lady you describe has not been well, and has probably found the walk longer and more wearisome than she supposed. As for the laudanum, that's used in many ways. Some cigars, if you please--thank you. I'll join the lady and see that she reaches home safely," and he hastily left the store and walked swiftly away. "He wouldn't go as fast as that if he wasn't a little uneasy, too," muttered the druggist, whose dearth of business gave him abundant leisure to see all that was going on, and to imagine much more. Van Berg determined to overtake Ida before she reached the hotel, and his strides were as long and swift as mortal dread could make them. In the meantime, while the artist was making the detour necessary to reach the drug-store without meeting Ida, she and her companions had started homeward. As they approached a church on the outskirts of the village, the bell in the steeple commenced tolling. "What's that for?" asked a young man of the party of a plain, farmer-like appearing man, who was just about to enter. "For prayer-meetin'," was the good-natured reply. "It wouldn't hurt you to come to it;" and the speaker passed into the lecture-room.