A dozen persons visited his office that morning, and each person as he came glanced over at the monument and its disturbed grave. _Had any whisper of the desecration which had there taken place found way to the village?_ The doctor quailed at the thought, but his manner gave no sign of his inner emotion. He was even more punctilious than usual in his attention to the wants of his visitors, and did not give them by so much as a glance of his eye an opportunity for question or gossip. At eleven o’clock he went out. There was a very sick child at the other end of the town and he could reach it only by passing the Fisher cottage. It had been taken ill at daybreak and word had been brought him by a passing neighbor. He had hopes, though he hardly acknowledged them to himself, that some explanation of the footsteps which disturbed him would be found in the sickness of this child. But when he reached the Fisher house the sight of Polly’s disturbed face, peering from the parlor window, assured him that the cause of his trouble lay deeper than he had hitherto feared. The discovery was a great shock to him, and as he went on his way he asked himself why he had not stopped and talked to the girl and found out whether she had been to his house or not the night before, and if so, what she had seen. But that he did not dare to do this was apparent even to himself; for after he had prescribed for his little patient he found himself taking another road home, a road which led him through frozen fields of untrodden snow, rather than run the risk of encountering Polly’s face again, with those new marks upon it of aversion and fear. When he re-entered his own gate it was with bowed head and shrunken form. His short walk through the village, with the discovery he had imagined himself to have made, cost him ten years of his youth. On his table there lay a letter. When he saw it a flush crossed his cheek and his form unconsciously assumed its wonted air of dignity and pride. It was from _her_ and the room seemed to lose something of its habitual gloom from its presence. But its tenor made him grow pale again. The letter read as follows: DEAR FRIEND: Clarke has tried every available means to avoid the result we feared, but as you will see from the inclosed letter from Ephraim Earle, Polly has but one course before her, and that is to give her father what he demands. She has so decided to-day, and if you see no way of interfering, the money will be paid over by nine o’clock to-morrow morning. This means years of struggle for Clarke. You bade us not to apply to you till every other hope failed. We have reached that point. Faithfully yours, GRACE UNWIN. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XIX. TO-MORROW.