‘It wouldn’t be the slightest use,’ she repeated excitedly.

’Of course if you go on saying that, I sha’n’t bore you any more, but do, Miss Johns, do, do just think a minute before you say it again.’

A note in his voice touched her at last; she paused for the required minute and then answered gently; her gentleness carried conviction.  ’I could never care for you.  You are not at all the sort of man I could ever care for, and I am going back to New York in a few days, so you won’t be troubled by seeing me any more.’

When Helen rushed breathless to the door of the Syndicate boat-house and told of the accident, the bachelors went out in a body and bore the Baby home.

They petted him until he was on his feet again.  They gained some vague knowledge of his interview with Helen, and he kept a very distinct remembrance of it.  Both he and they believed that his first attempt at love had come to nothing, but that was a mistake.

The Baby had loved with some genuine fervour, and his grief made a man of him.

VIII

WITCHCRAFT

A young minister was walking through the streets of a small town in the island of Cape Breton.  The minister was only a theological student who had been sent to preach in this remote place during his summer holiday.  The town was at once very primitive and very modern.  Many log-houses still remained in it; almost all the other houses were built of wood.  The little churches, which represented as many sects, looked like the churches in a child’s Dutch village.  The town hall had only a brick facing.  On the hillsides that surrounded the town far and wide were many fields, in which the first stumps were still standing, charred by the fires that had been kindled to kill them.  There were also patches of forest still to be seen among these fields, where the land had not yet been cleared.  In spite of all this, the town was very advanced, every improvement being of the newest kind because so recently achieved.  Upon huge ungainly tree-trunks roughly erected along the streets, electric lamps hung, and telephone wires crossed and recrossed one another from roof to roof.  There was even an electric tram that ran straight through the town and some distance into the country on either side.  The general store had a gaily dressed lay figure in its window,—­a female figure,—­and its gown was labelled ‘The Latest Parisian Novelty.’

The theological student was going out to take tea.  He was a tall, active fellow, and his long strides soon brought him to a house a little way out of the town, which was evidently the abode of some degree of taste and luxury.  The house was of wood, painted in dull colours of red and brown; it had large comfortable verandahs under shingled roofs.  Its garden was not old-fashioned in the least; but though it aspired to trimness the grass had not grown there long enough to make a good lawn, so the ribbon flower-beds and plaster vases of flowers lacked the green-velvet setting that would have made them appear better.  The student was the less likely to criticise the lawn because a very pretty, fresh-looking girl met him at the gate.