For a few moments Billy stood with the paper in his hand, the type a blur before his eyes. He could almost see Isobel's old home in Montreal. It was on the steep, shaded road leading up to Mount Royal, where he had once watched a string of horses "tacking" with their two-wheeled carts of coal in their arduous journey to Sir George Allen's basement at the end of it. He remembered how that street had held a curious sort of fascination for him, with its massive stone walls, its old French homes, and that old atmosphere still clinging to it of the Montreal of a hundred years ago. Twelve years before he had gone there first and carved his name on the wooden stairway leading to the top of the mountain. Isobel had been there then. Perhaps it was she he had heard singing behind one of the walls. He put the paper with the letters, making a note of the uncle's name. If anything happened it would be his duty to send word to him-- perhaps. And then, deliberately, he tore into little pieces the slip of paper on which he had written the name. Geoffrey Renaud had cast off his niece. And if she died why should he-- Billy MacVeigh-- tell him anything about little Isobel? Since Isobel's terrible castigation of himself and the Law duty had begun to hold a diferent meaning for him. Several times during the next hour Billy listened at the door. Then he made some tea and toast and took the broth from the stove. He went into the room, leaving these on the hearth of the stove so that they would not grow cold. He heard Isobel move, and as he went to her side she gave a little breathless cry. "David-- David-- is it you?" she moaned. "Oh, David, I'm so glad you have come!" Billy stood over her. In the darkness his face was ashen gray, for like a flash of fire in the lightless room the truth rushed upon him. Shock and fever had done their work. And in her delirium Isobel believed that he was Deane, her husband. In the gloom he saw that she was reaching up her arms to him. "David!" she whispered; and in her voice there were a love and gladness that thrilled and terrified him to the quick of his soul. XVIII THE FULFILMENT OF A PROMISE In the space of silence that followed Isobel's whispered words there came to Billy a realization of the crisis which he faced. The thought of surrendering himself to his first impulse, and of taking Deane's place in these hours of Isobel's fever, filled him instantly with a revulsion that sent him back a step from the bed, his hands clenched until his nails hurt his calloused palms. "No, no, I am not David," he began, but the words died in his throat.