So was this worthy doctor, sane, humane and religious in one--a very practical Samaritan. Yet, as it came to appear, not all his honest theories were able to serve him in the single direction where most he pined to see them vindicated. He was a widower, and possessed of an only child, a hopelessly crippled boy of fifteen. Bannister had been an inmate of the house for a full week before he learned of the existence of this pathetic incubus. The building was well-sized, its upper part, until he came to occupy it, delivered to gloom and emptiness, and, to reach his rooms, he had to pass by a door on the first landing which, in his early notice of it, was invariably closed. But one night, as he went by, he observed the door ajar, and saw a light and heard a voice within. The voice was not that of his landlord, nor of the hard-faced woman who acted as his sole servant and housekeeper. It was a weak voice and a querulous, and it seemed to be expostulating over the meagreness of some concession grudgingly vouchsafed. The musician paused in some astonishment, resting momentarily the foot of the harp he shouldered on a stair-tread. He never parted from his loved instrument, though in these days he used a good packhorse to convey it to and from the places where he performed. It was near midnight, and the house, but for the voice, was dead silent. The woman, after admitting him, had preceded him up the flight and vanished. It had never occurred to him that the place contained other than the two with whom he was familiar. He stood, petrified for the moment, and, as the sound of his footstep ceased, so did that of the low and feeble complaint. And then suddenly the woman came to the door and appeared before him. Bannister had always rather mentally recoiled from this person--her bony sallowness, her silence, the gloom of seeming tragedy in her eyes. He never learned from first to last what was her history; and yet, if tragedy there were connected with it, it had likely proved a tragedy no more heroic than that of lovelessness, and drudgery, and the hard resignation to that lot of unfulfilment which, foredoomed of personal ill-favour, is perhaps, to a woman, the bitterest tragedy of all. She served him, and waited on him well; she did everything efficiently save smile. Yet, for all her unemotional presence, he thought he perceived now, in the guttering light of the landing lamp, a sign of perturbation on her face. “I was surprised,” he said; “and stopped--no witting eavesdropper. I thought I heard a voice I did not recognize.” “’Twas Colin’s,” she said. “Anan?” He used, being country bred, the country expression. “Colin’s,” she repeated--“the master’s child.” “I never knew he had one.” “One.” She responded like an echo. “And ill?” “He’s always ill.” “Poor boy! Does this vigil signify----?” She answered the unfinished question. “He wanted the door left ajar that he might see you pass with your harp.” “See me pass?”