"I went away this summer and I wanted to stay. Mr. Goodloe tried to help me, but Nickols found where I was and made me come back. It was wrong to you and I knew it. I stayed shut up in my room, but he would come. And I sent him to his death. He was yours and I killed him for you! Please go away and leave me!" And again Martha cowered away from me. "Nobody need know you are in the house, Martha, but you must come with me," I said, and I spoke with such quiet authority that she rose and followed me out of the shadows into the starlit night which had come down over stricken Goodloets. I found Billy waiting for me in his car and he spoke gently to Martha and settled her and the boy on the back seat with never a question in his kind eyes. "God, you women!" he said to me under his breath, but I avoided his eye and he drove us silently to the Poplars. The long halls were quiet and empty in the anxious hush of the whole house which was keeping its life--or death watch. I led Martha to the room that opened into mine, in which all of the girl guests of the Poplars always slept, and made her take off her hat and make the boy comfortable. Then I went for Dabney and asked him to take food to them. "Yes'm, I will. God love my little miss," was his answer, and I knew that I could trust his kindness to Martha and the boy. Then I went into the library to father. I found Mr. Goodloe with him and father's calm under his anxious suffering gave me a thrill at the thought of the regained strength it implied. The parson's face was grave, but full of a white light from the fire burning back under the dull gold brows. His warm hands took my cold ones in them and pressed them palm to palm in the attitude of prayer and very tenderly, from his soul to mine, he said: "'The Lord is good, for his mercy endureth forever.'" "Forever?" I asked him, looking up with the child's faith that had been born in my heart shining in the confidence in my eyes. "Forever," he answered me with quiet authority. "Yes," said father solemnly, as if himself reassured after doubts. Then, after a second's pause: "Daughter, Nickols is conscious and is asking for you. Will you go to him?" I took my hands out of those which had given to mine the strength of prayer and went. CHAPTER XIX THE SPARK AND THE BLAZE I found Nickols lying in his own dim and high bedroom, perfectly motionless under the white sheet, as he had been for two days, the only difference that now his great dark eyes burned into mine and on his mouth there rested a faint trace of the old mocking smile. I sat down close beside his pillow on a low chair which the nurse placed for me as she gave me a warning look and left us alone. "This is your wedding day, Charlotte, and the license is over on the desk to destroy," he said, with the mocking light in his eyes flaring up into greater strength. "I suppose you are duly grateful for the merciful escape accorded you."