"Yes. Poor lady! She died in giving it birth. I remember now. It was a very sad business. Mrs. Marten was a remarkably beautiful woman. Her husband was inconsolable. He has not married again; but is devoted to his little daughter, who, by the way, was named after her mother--Nancy Willard Marten. Ah, of course, that middle name reminds me of something else. Mrs. Marten's father, Francis Willard, was accidentally shot last year." "Shot?" "Yes. He was summering in the Adirondacks, and was out after duck; but, by some mischance, caught a trigger when crawling through a clump of rushes, and blew the top of his head off." "He was near a lake, then?" "Yes. It wasn't Forked Lake, but a sheet of water in the hills not far distant. I can find out the exact locality if you wish it." "No, thank you. I am very much obliged to you." "No trouble at all. Sorry I hadn't better news, if these people are friends of yours." So Willard was dead, and by his own hand, and the scene of his last reckoning was the lake which witnessed the ignoble revenge he had wreaked on Power by sacrificing Nancy! The broken man bowed his head humbly. He had been scourged with whips; but his sworn enemy had been chastised with scorpions. CHAPTER XVII SHOWING HOW POWER MET A GUIDE If a man be harassed too greatly by outrageous fortune, there comes a time when he will defy the oppressing gods, and set their edicts at naught. Power's temperament fitted him for sacrifice carried far beyond the common limits of human endurance; but his gorge rose against this latest tyranny; the recoil from bright hope to darkest despair brought him perilously near the gulf. Seated in his room, and reviewing his wrecked life, he was minded then and there to fling himself into the worst dissipation New York could offer. What had he gained by his self-imposed penance, his exile, and his unquestioning service? No monk of La Trappe had disciplined body and soul more rigorously than he during seven weary years; yet, seemingly, his atonement was not accepted, and he was faced now by a decree that entailed unending banishment. Was Providence, then, less merciful than man? The felon, convicted of an offense against his country's laws, was better treated than he. The poor wretch released from prison was met at the gates of the penitentiary by philanthropic offer of reinstatement among his fellows; but for the man who had yielded once to the lure of a woman's love there was, apparently, no forgiveness. Why should he accept any such inexorable ban? He was young, as men regard youth in these days. He was rich. The wine of life ran red in his veins. Why should he fold his arms and bend his head, and say with the meek Jesuit whose moldering bones had harbored that beautiful volume lying there in its leather covering, "_Fiat voluntas Tua!_"