that there's no use trying, since one can't be sure till so long
afterward."

He was unfolding the paper as if he had hardly heard her; but
after a pause, during which the sheets rustled spasmodically
between his hands, he lifted his head to say abruptly, "Have you
any idea HOW LONG?"

Mary had sunk into a low chair beside the fireplace. From her
seat she looked up, startled, at her husband's profile, which was
darkly projected against the circle of lamplight.

"No; none. Have YOU?" she retorted, repeating her former phrase
with an added keenness of intention.

Boyne crumpled the paper into a bunch, and then inconsequently
turned back with it toward the lamp.

"Lord, no! I only meant," he explained, with a faint tinge of
impatience, "is there any legend, any tradition, as to that?"

"Not that I know of," she answered; but the impulse to add, "What
makes you ask?" was checked by the reappearance of the parlor-
maid with tea and a second lamp.

With the dispersal of shadows, and the repetition of the daily
domestic office, Mary Boyne felt herself less oppressed by that
sense of something mutely imminent which had darkened her
solitary afternoon. For a few moments she gave herself silently
to the details of her task, and when she looked up from it she