Elsewhere I must look for some solution of the puzzle that had added its complexity to a life already laboring under a burden of mystery. But in the meantime, an older vital question re-reared its head from the very hearthstone of the mill, whereon it had lain so long in stupor that I might have fancied it dead. CHAPTER XLVII. SOME ONE COMES AND GOES. November had come, with early frosts that flattened the nasturtiums in the town gardens and stiffened belated bees on the Michaelmas daisies, that were the very taverns of nature to lure them from their decent homes. This year the complacent dogmatism of an ancient proverb was most amply justified by results: “Be there ice in November that ’ill bear a duck, There’ll be nothing after but sludge and muck.” The bellying winds of December were to drive up such clouds of rain and storm that every gully in the meadows was to join its neighbor in one common conspiracy against the land, and every stream to overrun its banks, swollen with the pride of hearing itself called a flood. I had been reading one bright morning to my father until he fell asleep, and was sitting on pensively with the book in my hand, when I became aware of a step mounting the stairs below and pausing at the sitting-room door. I rose softly at once, and, descending, came plump upon Dr. Crackenthorpe, just as he was crossing the threshold to enter. He was very sprucely dressed, for him, with a spray of ragged geranium in his button-hole; and this, no less than the mere fact of his presence in the house, filled me with a momentary surprise so great that I had not a word to say. Only I bowed him exceedingly politely into the parlor and civilly asked his business. An expression of relief crossed his face, I thought, as though he had been in two minds as to whether I should take him by the collar and summarily eject him there and then. “I haven’t seen your father about lately,” he jerked out, with some parody of a smile that, I concluded, was designated to propitiate. “I called to inquire if the old gentleman was unwell.” “He is practically an invalid,” I said; “he keeps entirely to his own room.” “Indeed? I am concerned. Nothing serious, I trust? My services, I need not say, are at the command of so valued an old friend.” “He needs no services but mine. It is the debility of old age, I fear--nothing more.” “Yet he is a comparatively young man. But it’s true that to mortgage one’s youth too heavily is to risk the premature foreclosing of old age.” “I dare say. Was there any other object in your visit?” “One other--frankly.” He held out a damp hand to me. It shook rather. “I’m tired of this duel of cross-purposes. Will you agree to cry an armistice--peace, if you like?” I took him in from head to foot--a little to his discomfiture, no doubt. “Is this pure philanthropy, Dr. Crackenthorpe?” I said.