“Yes; you and I. You can do a lot to help, Ellen, if you will. That old man you saw is sick, hardly sane. And no wonder.” He stopped short and stared fixedly at his companion. “Did you guess who he was?” he asked abruptly. Ellen reflected. “I can guess—if you’ll give me time.” Jim made an impatient gesture. “That’s just what I thought,” he growled. “There’ll be the devil to pay generally.” “Jim,” said Ellen earnestly, “if we are to help her, you must tell me all about that old man.” “_She_ wanted to tell everybody,” he recollected gloomily. “And why not you? Imagine an innocent child set apart from the world by another’s crime, Ellen. See, if you can, that child growing up, with but one thought, one ideal—the welfare of that other person. Picture to yourself what it would be like to live solely to make a great wrong right, and to save the wrongdoer. Literally, Ellen, she has borne that man’s grief and carried his sorrow, as truly as any vaunted Saviour of the world. Can you see it?” “Do you mean—? Is _that_ why she calls it _Bolton_ House? Of course! And that dreadful old man is— But, Jim, everybody will find it out.” “You’re right,” he acknowledged. “But they mustn’t find it out just yet. We must put it off till the man can shake that hang-dog air of his. Why, he can’t even walk decently. Prison is written all over him. Thank God, she doesn’t seem to see it!” “I’m so glad you told me, Jim,” said Ellen gently. “You won’t say a word about this, will you, Ellen?” he asked anxiously. “I can depend on you?” “Give me a little credit for decency and common sense,” replied Ellen. Jim bent over the wheel and kissed her. Chapter XIX. Rain was falling in torrents, slanting past the windows of the old parsonage in long gray lines, gurgling up between loosened panes, and drip-dropping resoundingly in the rusty pan the minister had set under a broken spot in the ceiling. Upstairs a loosened shutter banged intermittently under the impact of the wind, which howled past, to lose itself with great commotion in the tops of the tall evergreens in the churchyard. It was the sort of day when untoward events, near and far, stand out with unpleasant prominence against the background of one’s everyday life. A day in which a man is led, whether he will or not, to take stock of himself and to balance with some care the credit and debit sides of his ledger. Wesley Elliot had been working diligently on his sermon since nine o’clock that morning, at which hour he had deserted Mrs. Solomon Black’s comfortable tight roof, to walk under the inadequate shelter of a leaking umbrella to the parsonage.