"Doctor, this must not be. You must stop it before there is any breath of scandal. Oh, for a minute last night I wanted to kill her." The doctor's face was stern. "If you had killed her your crime would have been far less hellish than the one you ask me to commit." The old man bowed his head upon his hands. "You will not help me," he groaned. The doctor rose and walked the floor. "No, sir," he said, "I will not stain my soul with murder for you or any other man." He went to the window and stood looking out upon the street below. Presently he said, "Mr. Stirling, will you come here a minute?" The old man rose and went. "Do you see that little boy skipping along down there?" "Yes, I see him." "If I should go down these stairs, seize him and dash his brains out against that building, what would you think of me?" "I'd think you were a devil." "Yet he would have a chance for his life. He could cry out, or the passersby might see me and interpose, while that you ask me to destroy is--" "There's one thing I'll do," said the old man fiercely. "I'll kill Ben Morely before this day is over!" He seized his hat and started toward the door. "Wait a minute!" said the doctor quickly. "It's Ben Morely is it? I know him. I would not have thought him capable of this." "He's been coming to see Mary steady for more than a year and they were to have been married three months ago but they quarreled and Mary told me last night that he was going away the last of this week. She is as good and sweet a girl as ever lived. She never kept company with anybody else and she thought the world of him. The damned villain has got around her with his honey words and now he proposes to leave her to face it alone. But I'll kill him as sure as the sun shines." "Sit down," said the doctor, laying a hand on the excited man's arm and forcing him into a chair. "Let me tell you what to do. Young Morely's father is a good and sensible man and will take the right view of it. Go straight to him and tell him all about it and my word for it, he will see that they are married right away. He is able to help them along and will make it to his son's advantage to stay here rather than go away. He will advise him right. Have no fear." The old man wrung the doctor's hand in silence and went out. Several days later the doctor was looking over the papers published in the town and read in the list of marriage licenses the names, "Benjamin Morely, aged twenty-four, Mary Stirling, aged eighteen." And that is why the scene in the farmhouse this summer night had sent him back into the past, for it was the home of Benjamin and Mary Morely, and it was a happy home. These two lives had come together and flowed on in such harmony and helpfulness and rectitude before the world that the stain had been wiped out. For a merciless world can be merciful sometimes if it will only stop to remember that long ago a compassionate Voice said, Go and sin no more.