"Does that make it any easier to bear?" cried John. "Don't you suppose I remember it every hour, and curse myself the more? You know perfectly well that I'm a different man to-day. I don't know what made me change; it was as if something had been injected into my blood that turned me against everything I had liked best before. I hate the sight of the men and the women I used to go with, not because they are any worse, but because they remind me of what I have lost. I have reached the point now where I have got to have news of Susanna or go and shoot myself." "That would be about the only piece of foolishness you haven't committed already!" replied Louisa, with a biting satire that would have made any man let go of the trigger in case he had gone so far as to begin pulling it. "Where is she?" John went on, without anger at her sarcasm. "Where is she, how is she, what is she living on, is she well, is she just as bitter as she was at first, does she ever speak of coming back?--Tell me something, tell me anything. I will know something. I say I _will_!" Louisa's calm demeanor began to show a little agitation, for she was not used to the sight of emotion. "I can't tell you where Susanna is, for I made her a solemn promise I wouldn't unless you or Jack were in danger of some kind; but I don't mind telling you this much, that she's well and in the safest kind of a shelter, for she's been living from the first in a Shaker Settlement." "Shaker Settlement!" cried John, starting up from his seat on the steps. "What's that? I know Shaker egg-beaters and garden-seeds and rocking-chairs and--oh, yes, I remember their religion's against marriage. That's the worst thing you could have told me; that ends all hope; if they once get hold of a woman like Susanna, they'll never let go of her; if they don't believe in a woman's marrying a good man, they'd never let her go back to a bad one. Oh, if I had only known this before; if only you'd told me, Louisa, perhaps I could have done something. Maybe they take vows or sign contracts, and so I have lost her altogether." "I don't know much about their beliefs, and Susanna never explained them," returned Louisa, nervously, "but now that you've got something to offer her, why don't you write and ask her to come back to you? I'll send your letter to her."