He vanished down the hill, and, returning to the kitchen, Joan lighted a candle and examined the letter. A fit of trembling shook the girl to the hidden seat of her soul as she did so, for her own name greeted her, in neat printed letters akin to those on the superscription of another letter she had received in the past. From John Barron it was that this communication came, and the reception of it begot a wild chaos of mind which now carried Joan headlong backward. Images swept through her brain with the bewildering rapidity and brilliance of lightning flashes; she was whirled and tossed on a flood of thoughts; a single sad-eyed figure retained permanency and rose clear and separated itself from the phantasmagorial procession of personages and events wending through her mind, dissolving each into the other, stretching the circumstances of eight short months into an eternity, crowding the solemn aisles of time past with shadows of those emotions which had reigned over the dead spring time of the year and were themselves long dead. Thus she stood for a space of vast apparent duration, but in reality most brief. That trifling standpoint in time needed for a dream or for the brain-picture of his past which dominates the mind of the drowning was all that had sped with Joan. Then, shaking herself clear of thought, she found her candle, which burned dim when first lighted, was only now melting the wax and rising to its full flame. A mist of damp had long hung on the inner walls of the kitchen at Drift, begotten not of faulty building but by the peculiar condition of the atmosphere; and as the candle flickered up in a chamber dark save for its light and the subdued glow of a low fire, Joan noticed how the gathering moisture on the walls had coalesced, run into drops and fallen, streaking the misty gray with bright bars and networks, silvery' as the slime of snails. With shaking hand, she set the candle upon a table, dropped into a chair beside it and opened her letter. For a moment the page with its large printed characters danced before her eyes, then they steadied and she was able to read. Like a message from one long dead came the words; and in truth, though the writer lived, he wrote upon the threshold of the grave. John Barren had put into force his project, which was, as may be remembered, to write to Joan when the end of his journey came in sight. The words were carefully chosen, for he remembered her sympathy with suffering and her extensive ignorance. He wrote in simple language, therefore, and dwelt on his own helpless condition, exaggerating it to some extent. "No. 6 Melbury Gardens, London.