* * * * * I am sure there was no evil in either of them--Boyd Endicott or Mary Jarvis. They were rather another Mildred and Mertoun, caught in the grip of circumstance and whirled asunder, by one of those ironical tricks which fate sometimes loves to play. For, on the night of the elopement, while Boyd Endicott, leaving Princeton on the eve of his Christmas vacation, was waiting for his bride at Trenton, with every preparation made to whirl her away to a new home in the West, she was speeding away from him toward New York. She had taken the train at Fanwood and was to change at Elizabeth. There, half dazed by the noise, bewildered by the storm which was raging, tremulous with fright, confused in the tangle of tracks, she had taken the wrong train. Boyd Endicott waited through the night, with what agony of doubt one can guess; then, when morning dawned, believing Mary Jarvis faithless--believing she loved her father more than him--hot-blooded and impetuous, he had boarded a train and journeyed alone into the West, where they had planned to build up a new home together. He was never to know the true story of that night, for there in the West, two days later, his life had been crushed out. Meanwhile, almost paralysed with fear, the girl arrived at New York. She was ill, benumbed, chilled with the cold; darkness was coming on; she knew not where to turn, and finally, in an agony of desperation, she sought the home of Mrs. Heminway. The cause of her illness could not be long concealed; she asserted that she was married, that she had been Boyd Endicott's wife for nearly a year; but her father did not believe her. For she had no marriage lines, she did not even know the name of the minister before whom their vows had been uttered--she could tell only of a long drive through the dashing rain one night when her father had been detained in town; of a hasty ceremony; of the drive home again. It was an incoherent story, at the best, and she told it in a half-delirium which made it more incoherent still. Her father was nearly mad with rage; in his first white wrath, he was for sending her forth into the streets. But his sister reasoned with him--there was no need of a public disgrace; she would take the child, the sight of it should never offend him, nor should his daughter know aught concerning it. Doubtless they would have made some effort to verify her story, but the news of Boyd Endicott's death rendered that unnecessary. For their plan was laid. So the child was born--a boy--and the mother lay for days and weeks hovering between life and death. When she came again to consciousness, they told her that the child was dead--had never lived, indeed. They told her, too--no doubt with a kind of fierce exulting--how Boyd Endicott had met his end--a fit punishment from the hand of God! The past was buried with him. It must be as though it had never been.