“Yes,” she answered slowly, “somethin’ has happened.  Are you dressed?  Could you come down?”

He replied that he would be down in a moment.  When he came he found her standing by the table waiting for him.  The look of her face in the lamplight shocked him.

“Why, Mrs. Coffin!” he exclaimed.  “What is it?  You look as if you had been through some dreadful experience.”

“Maybe I have,” she replied.  “Maybe I have.  Experiences like that come to us all in this life, to old folks and young, and we have to bear ’em like men and women.  That’s the test we’re put to, Mr. Ellery, and the way we come through the fire proves the stuff we’re made of.  Sorrows and disappointments and heartbreaks and sicknesses and death—­”

She paused on the word.  He interrupted her.

“Death?” he repeated.  “Death?  Is some one dead, some one I know?  Mrs. Coffin, what is it you are trying to tell me?”

Her heart went out to him.  She held out both her hands.

“You poor boy,” she cried, “I’m trying to tell you one of the hardest things a body can tell.  Yes, some one is dead, but that ain’t all.  Eben Hammond, poor soul, is out of his troubles and gone.”

“Eben Hammond!  Captain Eben?  Dead!  Why, why—­”

“Yes, Eben’s gone.  He was took down sudden and died about ten o’clock last night.  I was there and—­”

“Captain Eben dead!  Why, he was as well as—­as—­She said—­Oh, I must go!  I must go at once!”

He was on his way to the door, but she held it shut.

“No,” she said gravely, “you mustn’t go.  You mustn’t go, Mr. Ellery.  That’s the one thing you mustn’t do.”

“You don’t understand.  By and by I can tell you why I must be there, but now—­”

“I do understand.  I understand it all.  Lord help us! if I’d only understood sooner, how much of this might have been spared.  Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Mrs. Coffin—­”

“John—­you won’t mind my callin’ you John.  I’m old enough, pretty nigh, to be your mother, and I’ve come to feel almost as if I was.  John, you’ve got to stay here with me.  You can’t go to that house.  You can’t go to her.”

“Mrs. Coffin, what are you saying?  Do you know—­Have you—­”

“Yes, I know all about it.  I know about the meetin’s in the pines and all.  Oh, why didn’t you trust me and tell me?  If you had, all would have been so much better!”

He looked at her in utter amazement.  The blood rushed to his face.

“You know that?” he whispered.

“Yes, I know.”

“Did she tell—­”

“No, nobody told.  That is, only a little.  I got a hint and I suspicioned somethin’ afore.  The rest I saw with my own eyes.”

He was now white, but his jaw shot forward and his teeth closed.

“If you do know,” he said, “you must realize that my place is with her.  Now, when she is in trouble—­”