After Britt went out Serviss sat in brooding uneasiness over his visitor's sad revelations. He had known Viola Lambert but three days, and yet these revelations concerning her affected him most painfully, quite vitally. His pleasure in her and in the mother and their pretty home was utterly gone, and the breaking-off of this acquaintance left an ache in his heart. Of course he put all this on very general grounds. "I hate to lose faith in any one. It is a shock to know that I can be so wholly deceived by appearance. Clarke is really the one to blame in the deception. I can't believe the girl wilfully deceives, and yet Britt was explicit, and he seems to be a keen, dispassionate observer." Thereupon he began to pack in order to take the early morning train for the East. He decided not to see her again, and posted a polite note saying he had been obliged to return to New York, and that he regretted his inability to call. As he stood on the rear platform of his train next day, looking back up the cañon towards the shining crest of Colorow, he had a craven sense of having deserted a helpless young girl in the hour of her greatest trial. IX ANTHONY CLARKE, EVANGEL Mr. Britt was right. Mrs. Lambert was very fond of Clarke--had, indeed, quite taken him into her heart. He was at once son and spiritual adviser, and his wishes had the force of commands. His bereavement could not have anguished her much more keenly had Adele been her own daughter, and this affliction still lay like a mist between them, preventing even a foreboding of his impending confession of desire. Her remembrance of the beauty and high character of his wife made Viola seem doubly the child; and so when, from time to time, some busybody hinted at the minister's marked intimacy with her daughter, she put the covert insinuation away with a frank word--"You mustn't even think such a thing." Viola, too, from the very beginning of their acquaintance, had admired the young minister quite as deeply as Serviss imagined, and had humbled herself before Adele as to a very wonderful lady of the mysterious outer world, whose deportment, dress, and speech had been sources of enlightenment; and when she passed away, the land of the shadow became just that much richer, more complete in its dominion over her. Almost at once Adele spoke through the vale, saying, "I am here to help and guide."