“I don’t suppose she’ll care a rap for it, she’ll be so glad I am not here to mortify her, but she shall have it all the same,” he said, wiping the tears from it with his shirt sleeve and replacing it in the box. At the Harbor Hotel his anger against everybody and everything increased and reached its height when Paul appeared and spoke to him. Of what followed he had but little real knowledge. He had an impression that Paul meant to strike him, but was not sure. He knew he knocked Paul down and didn’t care. He heard the execrations of the people round him and didn’t care. He didn’t care for anything but to get away from it all, and, taking up his bag, he started to go,—he didn’t know where, or care. He was disgraced forever in the eyes of Elithe, who would hear what he had done and despise him. “I don’t believe I’ll send her the letter, and then she’ll never know that I am the Jack Percy whose name will be in everybody’s mouth in a few hours,” he thought, as he went down the steps. In the church across the street they were singing the Te Deum. He had heard the Venite in a confused sort of way, and something had struck him as familiar in it, although the music was new. Now as the words, “All the earth doth worship Thee, the Father everlasting,” were borne out upon the summer air he stopped suddenly. Surely that was Elithe singing, as he had heard her many times in the little Samona church. She was there, not many rods away. He might see her again, himself unseen, and he started for the church, while the people on the piazza looked after him, commenting upon his appearance and wondering why in his condition he should care to go to church of all places. He knew where to sit if the place were not occupied,—close by the door, in a corner, where, unobserved, he could see most of the congregation. He had sat there more than once when a boy and eaten peanuts and scribbled in the old Prayer Books and been frowned upon by the colored sexton, Pete. It was the same man now, grown older and gray-haired and less overwhelmed with a sense of his importance. He recognized Jack, and offered to take his satchel and conduct him up the aisle. Jack shook his head, indicating that he would rather stay near the door. Crowding himself to the farthest extremity of the pew he found that he could see a part of the choir and Elithe. She was singing the closing lines of the Te Deum, and in her tailor-made gown, sailor hat and all the appurtenances of a fashionable toilet, seemed a different Elithe from the one he had known, and for a brief moment he felt that he preferred her in her Samona dress, with the air of the mines and the mountains upon it. He had heard from Rob of the trip to Boston and its result and was glad. Elithe had been very minute in her description of her wardrobe to her mother, and Jack had often fancied her in her new attire. Now he saw her, and while not quite pleased with the change thought her more beautiful than ever before. He