bent smiling over the machine, which presently buzzed on its devouring
way. Three people had said the same thing within a few minutes. A look
of pleasure stole over the girl's face, and her bosom rose and fell with
a happy sigh. Somehow it was quite a wonderful day for her.




CHAPTER II

CLOSING THE DOORS

There are many people who, in some subtle psychological way, are very
like their names; as though some one had whispered to "the parents of
this child" the name designed for it from the beginning of time. So it
was with Shiel Crozier. Does not the name suggest a man lean and flat,
sinewy, angular and isolated like a figure in one of El Greco's pictures
in the Prado at Madrid? Does not the name suggest a figure of elongated
humanity with a touch of ancient mysticism and yet also of the
fantastical humour of Don Quixote?

In outward appearance Shiel Crozier, otherwise J. G. Kerry, of Askatoon,
was like his name for the greater part of the time. Take him in repose,
and he looked a lank ascetic who dreamed of a happy land where
flagellation was a joy and pain a panacea. In action, however, as when
Kitty Tynan helped him on with his coat, he was a pure improvisation of
nature. He had a face with a Cromwellian mole, which broke out in
emotion like an April day, with eyes changing from a blue-grey to the
deepest ultramarine that ever delighted the soul and made the reputation
of an Old Master. Even in the prairie town of Askatoon, where every man