motioned her to get into the little wagon to which he had himself hitched. Wardwell had heard of this harmless lunatic, had heard the reporters laughing over his antics. But now when he looked at him gambolling about, a great horse's tail bobbing from his coat to carry out the crazy delusion that he was a horse, he suddenly hated him. And he cringed inwardly, thinking of Augusta having to come and go through this. Why did they not keep such things out of sight? He pushed roughly past the big gangling lunatic and hurried Augusta along. But the fellow pranced grotesquely along beside them, saying:

"You needn't mind me. I'm only Johnnie the Horse. See me! I'm a horse! Look at me!"

Some one called to him and he turned back. But Wardwell, feeling the tremor in Augusta's arm, swore that she must not be allowed to go through this. He did not know what he would do. There seemed to be nothing that he could do.

They brought the patient out to where Wardwell and Augusta sat. They had not been able to find clothes to fit the large woman. The sight of her, untidy, forlorn, the great hopeless wreck of her shapely, competent self, brought a fresh shudder to Wardwell. He dared not look at Augusta.

"You know me this morning, don't you, mamma?"

"Oh yes, daughter, of course, of course." The big Woman gently disengaged herself from Augusta's clinging embrace and turned to where she had caught a glimpse of Wardwell.

"Oh, Mr. Jimmie, is it you? I thought of you when they didn't come to find me. But I couldn't think of the place. I got lost, it seems. My memory's not as good as it was. And every day I was looking for a sight of my little daughter Augusta coming to look for me. But I wouldn't like her to see me here."

"Why, mamma darling," the girl broke in, "I'm your Augusta! I'm your daughter. You called me daughter yesterday. Don't you know me today?"

"Yes, daughter, hush; yes, to be sure."

Rose Wilding drew quietly away, leaving Augusta dazed and heart sick. A fear more terrible than all—that her mother did not know her at all, would never know her—fell black upon her. True, her mother had called her "daughter." But she remembered that Rose Wilding had always had a habit of calling every girl daughter. Every girl in the neighborhood had been daughter with her.

The big woman took Wardwell by the hand and led him aside into a corner of the room.

"They're all like that here," she explained in a cautious whisper. "Every one of them thinks she's somebody else. I suppose the poor thing heard me speak of my daughter, and it wandered into her head that she was the one. And you might as well humor them. It does them no harm. You never can tell what they'll think of next. God help all that's afflicted!"

"But, that is your Augusta," said Wardwell.

"Now, Mr. Jimmie, you know you're always at you nonsense!" Rose Wilding answered, smiling slowly at him.

Now, curiously enough, it was that smile that brought the perspiration to Wardwell's forehead. It was the sane, deep, slowbreaking smile of Rose Wilding herself, the smile that had won the heart and the confidence of every child in every poor family of the parish. They knew her all, the big woman, the big woman of the smiling eyes, the mother heart, the never empty hand. There was Rose Wilding herself, in that smile. And yet, and yet—Wardwell reached at his tightening collar—there was a something else, a something deeper, farther away, elusive. And there was poor little stricken Augusta, standing alone in the middle of the room. He could see the sharp pink tips of her nails cutting into the palms of her hands as she fought back the bursting tears.

The blood rushed back into his heart and he felt himself gasping as a man does when he takes the leap in a desperate, cold dive. He did not know whether he was a good man or not. He did not know whether he was kind or cruel. But he knew that he had the answer to Augusta's question of the night before.

He loved Augusta with a love which had deepened in these weeks from a boy's harum-scarum affection into the deep, tender, protecting love of a man. He loved her, and would have given his life to save her the anguish of having to leave her mother in this place. Yet, he knew that it was unfair, wrong, unnatural. For her mother's sake, Augusta would sacrifice herself and marry any man. Wardwell knew it. Being Augusta, there was no choice for her. It was cruel, an outrage on her brave girlhood. But—So help him God!—he'd try to see that she never suffered from it.

Thus Wardwell of the funny sheet.

He nodded quietly to Augusta to leave the room. She went, strangely obedient to the look in his eyes. Then he turned to Rose Wilding.

"Now, Mrs. Wilding," he said easily, "Augusta and I are going to be married right away so that you can come home and live with us."

Rose Wilding sat down easily, smiling broadly. She seemed at ease once Augusta had left the room. "It wouldn't do for you to be in this place long, Mr. Jimmie," she said, "if it acts that way on you."

She was so like herself in her answer, so sane, so unruffled and ready, that Wardwell forgot the place where they were, and why they were there, and began to argue earnestly.

"Sounds funny, doesn't it? But then, it needn't. I don't have to play the fool always. And if Augusta cared enough for me—"

Rose Wilding sat up with a sharp movement. Wardwell could see the jealous, protecting mother-light in her eyes, as she questioned sternly:

"Just what has been going on?"

"Nothing," said Jimmie honestly. "I have not spoken a word to Augusta."

"Then it is just one other bit of your nonsense," she said with an air that dropped the matter altogether.

And Wardwell let it stand so. For a moment he had thought that he ought to try to make her understand. But he suddenly felt the hopelessness of it. It would not do any good. If she could understand, she would never give her consent. And it might do her great harm to let her be bothered and excited at this time. He and Augusta would have to face the problem out for themselves. A sudden wave of overpowering tenderness came breaking over him, so that he never knew what he said at leaving Rose Wilding.

He found Augusta out in a long, black corridor, looking from a window down across the dreary face of the water. She was so pathetically little, so tender, so sensitive, so delicately fashioned for pain! With a queer mingling of emotions, he found himself praying that she might be spared; and at the same time almost cursing himself because he was not a better man, more worthy of her.

On the boat they were practically alone. And as they stood out near the open prow, watching the cold drift of the spray as it broke over the bow, they saw the busy slits of streets sliding by, saw men and women how they hurried about their own business, saw that no one had time for thought of anything but that which concerned himself in the way of living.

And I think it came to both these two, at the same moment, how really alone they were out of all the world. Their doings or their thoughts were of no account to anyone. And in the weeks a common thought, an anxiety shared, had drawn them together, had almost made them forget that there was a world around them.

Suddenly Augusta shivered and cowered against Wardwell's arm.

"I can't," she moaned brokenly. "I can never stand it! I shall go mad so they'll have to put me in there too! And I know that if they'd only let me have Mamma she'd get all better and know me. If she was only at home, she'd remember everything!"

Wardwell put his arm gently around her shoulder.

"I didn't mean to say it this way, dear," he said softly. "But I think you