These and a hundred other thoughts raced through Doctor John’s mind as he sat to-night in his study chair, the lamplight falling on his open books and thin, delicately modelled hands.

Once he rose from his seat and began pacing his study floor, his hands behind his back, his mind on Jane, on her curious and incomprehensible moods, trying to solve them as he walked, trusting and leaning upon him one day and shrinking from him the next.  Baffled for the hundredth time in this mental search, he dropped again into his chair, and adjusting the lamp, pulled his books toward him to devote his mind to their contents.  As the light flared up he caught the sound of a step upon the gravel outside, and then a heavy tread upon the porch.  An instant later his knocker sounded.  Doctor Cavendish gave a sigh—­he had hoped to have one night at home—­ and rose to open the door.

Captain Nat Holt stood outside.

His pea-jacket was buttoned close up under his chin, his hat drawn tight down over his forehead.  His weather-beaten face, as the light fell upon it, looked cracked and drawn, with dark hollows under the eyes, which the shadows from the lamplight deepened.

“It’s late, I know, doctor,” he said in a hoarse, strained voice; “ten o’clock, maybe, but I got somethin’ to talk to ye about,” and he strode into the room.  “Alone, are ye?” he continued, as he loosened his coat and laid his hat on the desk.  “Where’s the good mother?  Home, is she?”

“Yes, she’s inside,” answered the doctor, pointing to the open door leading to the salon and grasping the captain’s brawny hand in welcome.  “Why?  Do you want to see her?”

“No, I don’t want to see her; don’t want to see nobody but you.  She can’t hear, can she?  ’Scuse me—­I’ll close this door.”

The doctor looked at him curiously.  The captain seemed to be laboring under a nervous strain, unusual in one so stolid and self-possessed.

The door closed, the captain moved back a cushion, dropped into a corner of the sofa, and sat looking at the doctor, with legs apart, his open palms resting on his knees.

“I got bad news, doctor—­awful bad news for everybody,” as he spoke he reached into his pocket and produced a letter with a foreign postmark.

“You remember my son Bart, of course, don’t ye, who left home some two years ago?” he went on.

The doctor nodded.

“Well, he’s dead.”

“Your son Bart dead!” cried the doctor, repeating his name in the surprise of the announcement.  “How do you know?”

“This letter came by to-day’s mail.  It’s from the consul at Rio.  Bart come in to see him dead broke and he helped him out.  He’d run away from the ship and was goin’ up into the mines to work, so the consul wrote me.  He was in once after that and got a little money, and then he got down with yellow fever and they took him to the hospital, and he died in three days.  There ain’t no doubt about it.  Here’s a list of the dead in the paper; you kin read his name plain as print.”