"I've been reading," she returned thoughtfully, she was trying to draw him out of this mood, "a book that tells how Venice grew up out of the sea; and it seems like life somehow. The streams came down from the mountains carrying grains, just grains, Dunce, of sand, and the ice and snow rolled down more clay and sand, all the currents of the sea kept carrying deposits to one spot until," absorbedly the girl recounted the dreamy geologic tale, her eyes fixed on distance. Dunstan heard her through patiently. "Sounds like the rags old Colter used to chew," he said, not uninterestedly. "By the way, Sard, what became of that mucker; turned out to be a ne'er-do-well, after all? What?" His companion was silent. Something in her face contracted as she tried to answer lightly. "Oh, I guess he's all right. Mr. Shipman has been following him up. He was ill after he left here. Then he went to work somewhere, and then I don't exactly know," said Sard. "Mr. Shipman is keeping his eye on him. I don't exactly know----" The invalid tried to change his position. "That so? Got him work, did he?" he asked. "Say, ain't Shipman the dear old prophet? By Gad, Sardine, what makes a gray-headed chap like that and what makes an old spinny like Miss Crayden homely, you know, and out of the game, what makes 'em do all they can for you and not cuss you back when you cuss and not let you get the blue devils, but hold umbrellas of hope over you and keep reminding you of another You that's back of you, sort of, and ringing up your good deeds like spiritual fares and everything. Say," said Dunstan earnestly, "I want to know. These old-timers, there ain't much in it for them. They must know it. Why in thunder do they keep making everybody on the Merry-go-round think they are going to get the Gold Ring?" His sister laughed. Sard, perching on Dunstan's bed, thoughtfully traced out the pattern of the white counterpane. The girl, thinner, with a look of limpid patience in the brook-clear eyes, tried to answer the question to herself. What, indeed, had made Shipman, who she had guessed was a baffled, lonely man, turn from his own concerns to help and encourage her? Why should he, to whom she could give nothing, keep the dark eyes with their look of "courage" so fixed upon her that even when he was not there she saw the look, heard the words and knew that the lawyer's strength and help were hers to call upon? Sard did not know that Watts Shipman, after Colter's collapse and his subsequent recovery and revelations, had been to Judge Bogart's with astounding news. The lawyer had sat in the Judge's library giving fact after fact of the distinction, nay, the actual academic fame of the Judge's hired man.