So Reggie and Mrs. Gray found themselves outside the gate alone. "I'll never go inside that gate again," cried Mrs. Gray, angrily. Then she added piteously, "Oh, Reggie, I thought we had got him safe." "So did I," said Reggie, ruefully. "What _can_ I do?" she moaned, "I've seen it coming on little by little, and now he's beginning not to care so much if--if people guess. I'm glad you know, Reggie; it's a comfort to have somebody to speak to. I used to think I should be perfectly happy if I had plenty of money--we girls at home used to be poor till Aunt died and left us her property, just before I was engaged, and now, often, I think I would so willingly have just John's income--and it's only a small income for so responsible a position--or work hard myself, if I could be sure of--of him. But there it is," she added sadly. "Tell me what I can do, Reggie." "You can pray for him," said Reggie, earnestly, "God _does_ hear and answer prayer and He can save to the uttermost." He hesitated and then added in a lower tone, "Mrs. Gray, are you an abstainer yourself?" "Well, not quite," said she, "but I hardly take anything." Reggie nodded. "Yes, but you take as much as you care to, and he takes as much as _he_ cares to. That is how Mr. Gray would look at it, and the way God looks at it is this, '_Judge this rather that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. Anything whereby thy brother stumbleth or is offended or is made weak._'" They had reached the Bank and she held out her hand with a sigh. "Thank you," she said, "well, I'll think about it." Reggie walked on to the corner of his own road and stood looking down it distastefully. Here he was in the middle of Bank holiday afternoon, in his best clothes, with nowhere to go and no one to speak to, feeling as if his life and himself and everything else were an utter failure. If he had only had on his cycling suit, he might have contemplated a ride, but the thought of turning into his dull lodgings, even to change, was unbearable, and the writing of a letter to Gertrude, with which he had beguiled many a lonely hour before, was not possible to-day. He turned at the sound of quick footsteps behind him, and heard his name called. "Why! Mr. Alston!" said the cheerful voice of the Scotch minister's little wife, "you look as if you belonged to nobody, and nowhere!" Then, seeing instantly that her words had hit too near the mark, she added quickly, "I wish, if you aren't engaged, you would come home to supper with us. I always feel as if I wanted to be entertained after a wedding, as if it were very dull to go home to just an ordinary tea, and its being a Bank holiday seems to emphasise the feeling. Mr. Mackenzie and I were just saying so, weren't we, Will?"