His red eyes were ablaze, but a great load seemed to be lifted off his mind, and his soul seemed to exult. “I have told him I must leave him, and I am to go, immediately. The disease was dire, and the remedy had to be dire also.” The old lady was holding her breath and watching his flushed face with strained attention. “And what may ye be going to do now?” “To become a religious in something more than the name; to leave the world altogether with its idleness and pomp and hypocrisy and unreality.” “Get yoursel' some flesh on your bones first, man. It's easy to see ye've no been sleeping or eating these days and days together.” “That's nothing--nothing at all. God can not take half your soul. You must give yourself entirely.” “Eh, laddie, laddie, I feared me this was what ye were coming til. But a man can not bury himself before he is dead. He may bury the half of himself, but is it the better half? What of his thoughts--his wandering thoughts? Choose for yoursel', though, and if you must go--if you must hide yoursel' forever, and this is the last I'm to see of ye--ye may kiss me, laddie--I'm old enough, surely.--Go on, James, man, what for are ye sitting up there staring?” When John Storm returned to his room he found a letter from Parson Quayle. It was a good-natured, cackling epistle, full of sweet nothings about Glory and the hospital, about Peel and the discovery of ancient ruins in the graveyards of the treen chapels, but it closed with this postscript: “You will remember old Chalse, a sort of itinerant beggar and the privileged pet of everybody. The silly old gawk has got hold of your father and has actually made the old man believe that you are bewitched! Some one has put the evil eye on you--some woman it would seem--and that is the reason why you have broken away and behaved so strangely! It is most extraordinary. That such a foolish superstition should have taken hold of a man like your father is really quite astonishing, but if it will only soften his rancour against you and help to restore peace we may perhaps forgive the distrust of Providence and the outrage on common sense. All's well that ends well, you know, and we shall all be happy.” XIX. “Martha's. “Lost, stolen, or strayed--a man, a clergyman, answers to the name of John Storm. Or rather he does not answer, having allowed himself to be written to twice without making so much as a yap or a yowl by way of reply. Last seen six days ago, when he was suffering from the sulks, after being in a de'il of a temper, with a helpless and innocent maiden who 'doesn't know nothin',' that can have given him offence. Any one giving information of his welfare and whereabouts to the said H. and I. M. will be generously and appropriately rewarded.