Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/295

Rh They crept into a back room of the dark school beside them. In a few words the doctor explained how he had survived. A meeting, he learned, was to be held that night, when the question of the eviction was to be finally settled.

"That man, he is not married again?" inquired the doctor, as though he could not trust himself to ask.

"Not exactly, sir. But he hopes to be," replied the old man, significantly; "all depends on to-night."

His companion understood and shuddered.

"Thank God! thank God!" he murmured.

In the course of their hurried conversation. Alec alluded to the tin box containing torn paper that he had secured. Requested to do so, he speedily brought it from his house. The doctor, recognizing the pieces, procured some gum and a sheet of foolscap in the schoolroom, and proceeded, as the two conversed, to gum the severed pieces side by side. In a short time the Will was restored.

Elms entered the great hall and pushed his way through the assembled company, rage and mortification in his heart, and a black scowl on his face.

"It's all up," whispered some, "she'll have nowt to say to him. You see. Plague on her!"

Elms explained that from the first he had done what he could for them. They, however, had been ungrateful and indolent. He had resolved to fill their places with persons better calculated to carry a communal experiment to a successful issue. He had hoped that another turn might have been given to events. Mrs. Courtenay had it in her power to arrange an amicable settlement, if she cared to do so. At a last interview, however, she had