It was just after ten o’clock when Lily re-entered the corridor of the Terminus. She had no desire to go to bed, and when the parson begged permission to smoke his "lastly" with her, she assented very willingly. This kindly, gentle soul, the world appeared to have cast him out also, for he was without kith or kin, a lonely bachelor in this wilderness of mountains, desiring nothing so much as the good of mankind, but deprived by the subtleties of the ecclesiastical system from any performance which would have done him credit before the people. Naturally, he delighted in the society of a beautiful woman, who stood to him for a type of all that was highest and holiest in the human story. At a look from her he would have revealed the most sacred truths of his life—for so are men led to the confessional; but the opportunity passed, and he spoke again of things he believed to be commonplace. "By the way," he said, "do you remember the strange affair at Vermala?" She looked up astonished. "Yes, indeed; and what of it?" "Well, I chanced to meet one of the gendarmes this morning, a mere boy, whom they call Philip Gaillarde. He tells me that the affair is no longer a mystery. It was his brother who was killed on the Zaat—I believe by an Englishman who has been in trouble. The young man had just obtained leave from his superiors to go into Italy—I think he must have started by the morning train. He says that the assassin is near Locarno on Lake Maggiore. He has gone there to-day to arrest him." Lily made what reply she could, but she did not speak again of it. The night had been very cold, and now that they were under shelter again she began to fear that she had taken a chill. A shivering fit was succeeded by a little faintness, which caused the parson great concern. He advised her to go to bed immediately, and she welcomed the suggestion. Philip Gaillarde in Italy! What, then, had prevented her going that morning? An excuse of the trains. She knew that it was not so, but rather the hope that she might yet see a man who loved her, and say "farewell" to him. *CHAPTER XXIV* *THE DOCTOR INTERVENES* The world is as little interested in the harvest another reaps of his success as in the dinner he ate yesterday. Benny’s flight for the great prize had been a pleasant interlude at Andana, an excitement which might be permitted to postpone for a day the necessary operations of skating, ski-ing and curling. But when the flight had been accomplished, the little colony returned with what zest it could to its pleasures. These, unhappily, were pursued but sadly on the day following the great event. A cold bitter wind blew up the valley from Visp, and the snow fell incessantly during the morning and again at night, as has been told.