with golden clumps the brown hillside; wild lavender gleamed in patches across the silver-streaked marshes; the dead hedges came blossoming into life.  Crocuses, long lines of yellow and purple crocuses, broke from waxy buds into starlike blossoms along the front of Matthew Nicholls’s garden.  And with the coming o spring, Tavernake found himself suddenly able to thin of the past.  It was a new phase of life.  He could sit down and think of those things that had happened to him, without fearing to be wrecked by the storm.  Often he sat out looking seaward, thinking of the days when he had first met Beatrice, of those early days of pleasant companionship, of the marvelous avidity with which he had learned from her.  Only when Elizabeth’s face stole into the foreground did he spring from his place and turn back to his work.

One day Tavernake sat poring over the weekly local paper, reading it more out of curiosity than from any real interest.  Suddenly a familiar name caught his eye.  His heart seemed to stop beating for a moment, and th page swam before his eyes.  Quickly he recovered hill self and read: 

The queen’s hall, Unthank road,
Norwich

Twice daily. 
Professor Franklin
assisted by his daughter,
miss Beatrice Franklin,
will give his refined and marvelous
entertainment, comprising hypnotism, feats
Of second sight never before attempted on
any stage, thought-reading, and a brief
lecture upon the connection between ancient
superstitions and the extraordinary
developments of the new science.

Professor Franklin Can be consulted privately,
by letter or by appointment.  Address for this
week—­The Golden Cow, Bell’s Lane, Norwich.

Twice Tavernake read the announcement.  Then he went out and found Ruth.

“Ruth,” he told her, “there is something calling me back, perhaps for good.”

For the first time she gave him her hand.

“Now you are talking like a man once more,” she declared.  “Go and seek it.  Comeback and say good-bye to us, if you will, but throw your tools into the sea.”

Tavernake laughed and looked across at his workshop.

“I don’t believe,” he said, “that you’ve any confidence in my boat.”

“I’m not sure that I would sail with you,” she answered, “even if you ever finished it.  A laborer’s work for a laborer’s hand.  You must go back to the other things.”

CHAPTER III

OLD FRIENDS MEET

The professor set down his tumbler upon the zinc-rimmed counter.  He was very little changed except that he had grown a shade stouter, and there was perhaps more color in his cheeks.  He carried himself, too, like a man who believes in himself.  In the small public-house he was, without doubt, an impressive figure.