“I have a friend,” she said aloud. “Have you not been to me the kindest friend, the most generous”--She faltered, but presently went on, a strange courage coming to her. She had turned slightly toward him, though she looked not at him, but upward to where the light streamed through the high window. It fell now upon her face. “It is a great thing to save life,” she said. “To save a soul alive, how much greater! To have kept one soul in the knowledge that there is goodness, mercy, tenderness, God; to have given it bread to eat where it sat among the stones, water to drink where all the streams were dry,--oh, a king might be proud of that! And that is what you have done for me.... When you sailed away, so many years ago, and left me with the minister and his wife, they were not always kind. But I knew that you thought them so, and I always said to myself, ‘If he knew, he would be sorry for me.’ At last I said, ‘He is sorry for me; there is the sea, and he cannot come, but he knows, and is sorry.’ It was make-believe,--for you thought that I was happy, did you not?--but it helped me very much. I was only a child, you know, and I was so very lonely. I could not think of mother and Molly, for when I did I saw them as--as I had seen them last. The dark scared me, until I found that I could pretend that you were holding my hand, as you used to do when night came in the valley. After a while I had only to put out my hand, and yours was there waiting for it. I hope that you can understand--I want you to know how large is my debt.... As I grew, so did the debt. When I was a girl it was larger than when I was a child. Do you know with whom I have lived all these years? There is the minister, who comes reeling home from the crossroads ordinary, who swears over the dice, who teaches cunning that he calls wisdom, laughs at man and scarce believes in God. His hand is heavy; this is his mark.” She held up her bruised wrist to the light, then let the hand drop. When she spoke of the minister, she made a gesture toward the shadows growing ever thicker and darker in the body of the house. It was as though she saw him there, and was pointing him out. “There is the minister’s wife,” she said, and the motion of her hand again accused the shadows. “Oh, their roof has sheltered me; I have eaten of their bread. But truth is truth. There is the schoolmaster with the branded hands. He taught me, you know. There is”--she was looking with wide eyes into the deepest of the shadows--“there is Hugon!” Her voice died away. Haward did not move or speak, and for a minute there was silence in the dusky playhouse. Audrey broke it with a laugh, soft, light, and clear, that came oddly upon the mood of the hour. Presently she was speaking again: “Do you think it strange that I should laugh? I laughed to think I have escaped them all. Do you know that they call me a dreamer? Once, deep in the woods, I met the witch who lives at the head of the creek. She told me