"Don't touch him!" she cried. "It's what he's waiting for you to do! Can't you see the look on his face--that wronged look of a man that's done nothing but wrong all his life?" She stopped, the words swelling within her, too big for utterance. Jim put a quieting arm about her; and just then Old Con made an abrupt motion towards her wrist. "I guess," he said, "that a father--" But she was before him. "Father! He's not my father, d'ye hear? I've kept my word to him and now I'm going to keep it to myself! You see that sun over the hills?"--She turned to Con.--"It's the spring sun--it's summer--summer, d'ye hear? And it's _mine_--and I'm going to have it, before I'm dead like my mother died with her body still living! You're no more my father than that dead tree the sun can't ever warm again!--It's for good--I said it would be for good--and it is!" We took her, sobbing dryly, between us, up the road. That night in our house Lisbeth was married to Jim. A deep serenity seemed to hang about her as though for the moment the past had been shut away from her by a mist. As for Jim, there was a wonder in his eyes, not unlike that I had seen when he came upon an old Lippo Lippi, and a great comprehending reverence. There were tears at the back of my eyes--then the beauty of the scene drove all else back before it. * * * * * There is one more episode in the life of Con Darton and Lisbeth. Knowing him, it would be incredible that there should not be. It happened some five years later and I was concerned in it from the moment that I was summoned unexpectedly to Mr. Lin Darton's office in the city, a dingy though not unprosperous menage located in the cheaper part of the down town district. I found him sitting amid an untidy litter of papers at the table, talking through the telephone to some one who later developed to be Miss Etta; and I had at once a feeling of suffocation and closeness, due not alone, I believe, to the barred windows and the steaming radiator. The family resemblance that Mr. Lin Darton bore to Old Con threw into relief the former's honesty, and made more bearable his heavy sentimentalism, upon which Con had played as surely as on a bagpipe, sounding its narrow range with insistent evenness of response. "I want to talk to you about Con," he said gravely, as soon as the receiver had been hung up, "and--Lisbeth." He uttered his niece's name as though it were a thing of which he could not but be ashamed. I said nothing to this, and waited. "As you are still in touch with her; and, as the situation is probably already partly known to you, I thought you might be able--willing--" He hesitated, paused; and a grieved look came into his eyes that was quite genuine. I realized the fact coldly. "Whatever I can do," I assured him, "I shall be glad to." "None of us," he continued, "have seen Lisbeth since that terrible night four years ago, when she turned Con away from her house."