The story of Wandering Willie

by Lady Augusta Noel

PART II.

Who is the honest man?
He that does still and strongly good pursue,
To God, his neighbour, and himself most true;
Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpinne, or wrench from giving all their due.
George Herbert.

A great oak in Wyncliffe Chase was doomed to be cut down.

It was a goodly, wide-spreading tree, too wide-spreading indeed, for some of its branches came in the way of a certain forest-king, a huge-limbed mighty giant among trees, within whose stately area of space no neighbour was allowed to trespass. So the younger tree was to come down.

It met its fate on a sparkling autumn day. There was just a touch of sharpness in the air. The woods were mostly green still, though already plenty of red and brown and yellow patches told that autumn was upon us. The horse-chestnuts shining on the ground near their empty white shells, and the crimson and purple leaves of the bramble-bushes belonged to autumn too.

Now it is the old story. I have forgotten the great things and remembered the small. Nine years or more had passed since Caleb Morton's marriage. We had been growing up all this time, and changing by little and little, outwardly and inwardly. We left school and set about our business in life—Cuthbert became second forester under Clifford, Hildred's brother, and I had lately begun to be old Farmer Foster's bailiff at Furzy Nook.

How all these changes came about by degrees I have well-nigh forgotten. But I remember quite well the pheasants crowing in the wood that day, and the dead gold fern, and the voices that talked and laughed round the falling tree.

And out of the mists of failing memory, where they have been hidden for so long, Cuthbert and Hildred, and I myself, seem to come forth again distinctly on that autumn morning; Cuthbert and I no longer boys, Hildred a girl, not any more a child.

Cuthbert raised his axe, and struck and struck, until he was fain, for want of breath, to draw back, and turn towards us and laugh. Hildred sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, with a great bundle of sticks she had been gathering, tied up in a red handkerchief at her feet, and I stood near her—sometimes speaking to her, oftener full of thoughts that were an idle many-coloured medley, brightly-tinted as the autumn woods themselves.

First of all it was sweet, passing sweet, to stand there beside Hildred. That was an old thought. It remained the same, while the rest shifted, and flitted to and fro, first one way, then another, like leaves that the wind plays with and blows about as it will. The tree—it would not be standing half an hour hence. Where would the rooks that had built in it for three summers past have their nest next spring? Cuthbert's strokes bit deeper into the tough heart-of-oak than any of the others. He was stronger even than Matt Clifford. Poor tree, it was hard for it, Hildred said just now, to leave its fair woodland world. Yes, and it would be hard to leave a great many things if one had to do so, first and foremost—I broke off there, for they had got a rope round the trunk, and Clifford called out to the men to stand clear. The great tree tottered. Hildred shouted with the rest, and clapped her hands.

Well, I must see it down now, though I really ought to be where the ploughs are going over the sunny 'Seven Acres,' on the hill, a mile away from here. Then I looked again at Hildred, perched laughing on her mossy seat, with the golden fern at her feet and the dark woods behind her, and I tried to find a rhyme to the word 'winsome' to end some verses I had been making in my head.

Master Caleb Morton had not given up lending me books, in the years since I had ceased to be a scholar of his, and ploughmen and shepherds, he told me, had been poets before now; so I tried to make verses too. I kept them very secret, never telling anyone about them, not even Hildred—whom indeed they chiefly concerned—or Cuthbert. Many an hour's hard work I beguiled by stringing my rhymes together, always hoping I was making something that would be beautiful.

But I was a poor scholar, for all Cuthbert and Hildred said, I was fonder of hard words than Master Caleb himself. My lines would not often come right. I was not good at putting my thoughts in harness. They were like a team that will not go together. Some got on too fast and covered too much ground, and others stood still, or else wanted to go off at quite a different pace. So I got disheartened. Besides, what was the use of such poor words as I could find? If I called the sunshine 'golden,' was that half bright enough for the life-giving light? And if I said the wind whispered, or the river sang, it was not what I meant.

Sometimes at night I thought I had made something very good, and went to sleep contented, but in the morning, when I said over my verses, all the meaning seemed to have gone out of them. I said to myself at last, 'You are very weak, and Nature is very strong. She can speak to your heart and tell you all things; but it is not given you to repeat what she says to others. From henceforth listen, but in silence.' And so I gave up making verses. I have listened all my life long, and now that I am old, I try once more to say a little of what I have been hearing all these years. And perhaps because I am more humble and expect less, perhaps because my eye and ear are growing duller, I am not so discontented as I once was. I know my words are poor, but I am waiting. Soon I shall learn the new song that they sing up there, beyond the sunlight, and then I shall be satisfied.

However, I had not got to that yet. I went on trying to find my rhyme, and failed, as better people may have done before me.

It was a pity. The word winsome might have been made for Hildred. Mistress Dorothy Morton, years ago, had called her the picture of a child. I am sure she was the picture of a maiden now. It was a very fair flower that had bloomed in our grey old ruin.

Those bygone times, when we used to let Hildred go about with us now and then, as a great treat for her, were very wonderful to look back to. Now I prized every minute that she lighted up with her sunbeam pleasure.

The knowledge of what she was to me, had come so gradually that I cannot remember when I first felt that my life-choice was made, and that the world held for me but one thing worth living for. I had been sure of it for many a long day, before I dreamed of putting the love I bore her into words. Nearly all my life it must have lain deep down in my heart, like a seed that, buried in the ground, waits for the coming of the spring; and now, in the spring and sunshine of my young manhood, it had risen up in blossom and in fruit.

'Willie, here comes your father,' said Hildred presently, jumping up and running off to meet him. They liked each other, those two. My father—it was no wonder certainly—had smiles and even words for her, such as he was never known to bestow on anyone else. Hildred was not a bit afraid of him, though other people said he became more 'dour' and hard as he got on in life. She came along by his side now, suiting her light footsteps to his heavy tread; he nodded now and then in answer to her merry chatter, and a look of slow contentment stole over his face. She made him stop for a moment to watch the wood-cutters, and as they stood looking on, the tree came crashing down at last.

Our idling time was over as soon as my father came. I turned away, and Hildred raised the bundle of sticks on to her head, and moved towards home.

'I haven't been losing much time,' she said, looking up at him merrily from under its shadow. 'Look, all these for Granny.'

'Good girl,' he answered, and he even stood still to watch her carrying it lightly in and out among the trees, and singing as she went.

Hildred never let the grass grow under her feet. She was always up and about. The bundle of sticks that pleased my father was only of a piece with all her sunny, helpful ways. She had gathered sticks for Granny hundreds of times before, only it was fated that this bundle should first put a thought into my father's head that he pondered over in his slow way all through the winter.

He told it to me one evening in the early spring, as we were going home from work together. I saw him looking round at me once or twice, as if there was something he had a mind to say, if he had known how to set about it.

'Grandmother's got to be an old woman,' he began at last, but after I had said 'yes,' he did not appear for some time to have anything to add.

'We need some one younger to keep the house,' he went on presently. 'I say, Will, do you ever think anything about getting married?'

I certainly did think of it very often indeed—a good deal oftener than I cared to tell my father. The question took me so by surprise that I scarcely knew how to answer it. At last I said bashfully, that 'perhaps I might, odd times.'

'Ha! 'cause if so be she's a stirring, thrifty lass, I don't care how soon you do.'

'If I could, I don't know if Hildred would,' I stammered, more astonished than ever, for I had always thought that I should have to make a home of my own, before I could ask Hildred to marry me.

My father nodded gravely once or twice when he heard her name. 'I thought as much,' he muttered, more to himself than to me, 'She'll do.' And as we reached home he stopped to say, 'Then you can bring your wife home here whensoever it suits yourself. I'm agreeable, lad, without any more waste of words.'

Without any more words with him, but a great many with myself. My wife—Hildred! That soft, sparkling little creature, that no trouble ought to come near—such was my thought then—or sorrow touch. Would she let me try to take care of her? Would she come to the grey old gate-house some day in her butterfly brightness and beauty, and fold her wings there, and be my own? Little Hildred, whom my mother used to love and pet in the old days. It seemed strange that we were longing for her now to fill my mother's place. But would she come?

That was the one question. I wearied myself with finding answers to it. Hildred herself, I was sure, little knew all that she was to me. No one had found it out, I believed, except my father, with that odd silent watchfulness of his. Not even Cuthbert—I almost wished he had, that I might have talked to him about it; but he never guessed my one secret, and somehow I could not make up my mind to tell him.

No, I must ask Hildred herself first; and now there would be many long days to live through before I even saw her again. For on the morrow I had to go away to see my dear old master, Caleb Morton, and it might be a fortnight before I could get back to Wyncliffe. Granny and Cuthbert and Matt Clifford were all standing round when I said good-bye to Hildred. It was a great pity that my father had waited to speak, until my last day at home. I had been reckoning on my journey beforehand, but now I should only count the days until I could come back.

It was two years since I had seen Master Caleb. A very dark day it had been for Wyncliffe when he gave up the school, and went to be master to a much larger one a long way off. But it was such a piece of good fortune as he had long deserved, and his friends could only rejoice for him even while they mourned over losing him.

His new home was in a busy sea-port town, as different as possible from quiet Wyncliffe. Instead of trees, they had the crowded masts of the shipping in the harbour to look at. Huge bales of merchandise piled up along the quays; sailors of all countries and tongues thronging the streets and waterside; vessels continually gliding into port or gliding out again on their paths over the sea. This, in exchange for the harvest fields and the blue hills at home. The smell of salt and tar on the sea-breeze, instead of the breath of flowering lime-trees. And the queer-sounding languages shouted by foreign voices, were very different from the distant cries of field labourers, and the cawing of the rooks, round Wyncliffe schoolhouse. Only, to make up for all, there was the solemn beauty and wonder of the sea. Words cannot utter it, or, once seen, memory lose hold of its vastness.

It mattered little to Master Caleb and his wife where their lot was cast. They carried their own sunshine with them, and would have been happy anywhere; still, they were faithful in heart to their first home, and had been longing, Mistress Morton told me, for the sight of a Wyncliffe face.

I was to have stayed with them for ten days. I was three months away from home. On what was to have been the last day of my stay, Master Caleb and I were overtaken in a thunder-storm, as we were driving home from a distance along the coast. I never quite knew how it happened. The horse took fright at the lightning. It was a dark evening, and Master Caleb, not much skilled in driving, had the reins. We went over the rocks together, horse and gig and all. Master Caleb escaped, fortunately, with a few bruises, and I broke my leg.

It might have been much worse. I was taken home to Master Caleb's house, and Mrs. Janet nursed me. Those weary weeks that I lay unable to move, would not have seemed so endless if it had not been for my longing to get home to Hildred. But for that, I should have been well content. After the first days of racking pain were over, and I came back to the knowledge of outward things, I used to lie and watch the little scenes of household life that passed like pictures before my eyes, and think how pleasantly true to my remembrance of them my old friends were. Master Caleb, creeping up to my bedside laden with books, in the full security that even at the worst they must be the best cure for pain or fever—Mrs. Janet, ordering him and them scornfully away, coming in with her business step and skilful hand, the very model of a sick-nurse; prompt of action, short, positive, and encouraging of speech. How like their old selves they were! And Mistress Dorothy, just to have her there to look at, did me more good than anything else. None of the power of comfort or healing had gone from her voice and smile. To her only I could talk of Hildred. Of course I had told her all about that. She only could quiet the restlessness that grew on me as the slow days dragged on.

It seemed so hard to be away just then from Hildred. How was I to keep still, thinking of what might have been by this time, if I had been able to go home. Never before had I been without seeing her for so long. I dreamt of her whenever I fell asleep, always the same dream, that she was in trouble, and I could not move to help her.

Cuthbert, too, that was another trouble; how was he getting on with my father all this time? When I was at home I could generally keep things pretty straight between them, but they did not understand each other. My father never cared for him; the little he said to him was sharp and harsh. And Cuthbert—what wonder?—could not always bear it well. He had a high spirit, and for all his sweet temper, he liked to take his own way, and, once taken, chose to keep it. If I could only hope that he would be patient now, or that my father would not try him with some of those sharp bitter words that stung so deeply!

It was no use Mrs. Janet's telling me that an easy mind helped to mend broken bones. It might be so, but an easy mind was quite beyond my reach.

Dorothy did better than preach patience, she shared my impatience. As often as I pleased she was ready to count over with me the weary days that they said must pass before I was fit for a journey. Also she charmed long hours away by letting me talk of Hildred.

My release came at last. I could walk pretty stoutly with a stick, by the time that the coach dropped me, just after dusk on an evening in June, at the crossing of the four roads, close to Wyncliffe village.

Before I got into the straggling little street, I heard music in front of me—fifes and drums sounding noisily through the quiet of the summer's evening. It was a recruiting party—no unusual sight in those war days. As I overtook them I was told that I was a fine fellow, and asked if I would not join them and fight for the King.

They were just going into the Castle—the public-house—when I passed, and as I turned my head to look at the light that was streaming from it, I heard my own name called suddenly. The next moment Cuthbert came out and joined me.

'Willie! thank Heaven you are come. Are you better?' he said, seizing my hand and wringing it.

'Yes. What's the matter, Cuthbert? what are you doing here?'

He did not answer, but moved so as to stand in the circle of light from the open door. I looked at him again, and saw the gay ribands that the recruits wear, fluttering from his hat.

'Cuthbert!'

'Yes, you see I have enlisted. Why, Will, I did not think you would mind it so much;' for, thunderstruck I leant against the wall to gather breath. He put his hand on my shoulder.

'It's not worth troubling about.'

'You can be bought off,' I said, recovering myself.

'Not for the world. Why should I? I did it of my own free will, for I can't stay here, and I won't.'

'Why, what has come to you?'

He was very pale, I saw, and his hands shook. He looked as if some great storm of trouble or anger had passed over him. After a minute's pause he said suddenly, 'Did you know that your father kept a store of money, gold guineas, and shillings, and a five-pound note, in an old teapot in the cupboard behind his bed?'

'What are you talking about? No.'

'No more did I,' said Cuthbert. 'Well, he lost it.'

'But what has that to do with you?'

Cuthbert gave an odd short laugh. 'Only that he says I took it.'

'I don't understand.'

'Perhaps you think so too,' he said bitterly. 'No, Will, you know I did not mean that, but they've driven me half out of my senses with all this.'

'Cuthbert, my father never said you had taken his money.'

'Said it, or thought it, it pretty nearly comes to the same thing. I understood well enough what he was after, so I'm off. Never mind that now. We can't talk here, and I've got something to say to you. We don't go until to-morrow morning, so I can walk back with you.'

'You're coming home for to-night, at all events?'

'I can't go there,' said Cuthbert his lip trembling, 'not to your father's house. Clifford will take me in.'

He turned and spoke to some one inside the house. There was a confused noise of singing and loud laughter, and the jingling of glasses from the bar. In a minute Cuthbert came out again, and said it was all right. He need not be there until sunrise the next day.

'Come on,' he said impatiently, and he began to walk up the street with long, quick strides.

'Now tell me,' I said.

Cuthbert's mood had changed. 'There's little enough to tell,' he answered quietly, 'only that I've enlisted. After all, I'm a soldier's son, and I know the life. I've always had a hankering after it, as you know.'

'But my father, what has he done? Try and tell me.'

'It's all along of this money. He's been scraping it and hoarding it together for ever so long. He thought no one knew about it. No more they did. But two days ago he missed it.'

Cuthbert had begun quietly, but now his eyes were lighting again, and his voice quickened. 'And he thinks I took it. I to take his money! and your father, too.'

'He couldn't think so. You must have made some great mistake.'

'Not I. I saw what he was at well enough. Don't you think I know he's always hated me? You know it too, Will, though you've tried so hard to keep me from finding it out. He was mad when he found his money gone, and he spoke out then pretty plain—as he never did before.'

'He didn't say you took it.'

'Not at first—not straight out, till I asked him what he meant—he did then. I wouldn't stay another day after that. You wouldn't have had me stay, Will?'

'There were others there,' he went on again, 'when he accused me of knowing more of the money than I cared to say. Hildred was there.'

'She didn't believe it of you.'

'God bless her, no.'

I put my hand on his arm. 'Cuthbert, you ought to stay here, don't you see?'

He looked at me.

'You mean they'll say I've gone off with the money. No, they won't say that. I thought I'd told you the money was found again.'

'Found!'

'Yes, but that made no odds. I can't stay where I've been served as your father served me.'

'But who found it?'

'The money? Oh, it was all Granny's doing.' Cuthbert smiled. 'Poor Granny, she had taken the teapot away, not knowing.'

'What did father say?'

'I don't know. I didn't stay to hear. I tell you it was all one, after what he had thought of me. Will, I, that he took in—though that was your doing and your mother's, not his. I, that had grown up in his house and thought I was like his son. I wish he had turned me out of doors when your mother died. Maybe some day I may feel as grateful to him for his charity as I ought to be. I can't now.

'I did not mean to say aught of this to you, old chap,' he went on sadly. 'I ought not, only I can't help it. It wouldn't any of it have happened if you had been at home.'

'Then let me get you off,' I said eagerly. 'Let me do something for you.'

'Yes, that you shall, but not that. What a mercy it is that you have got home in time! It wasn't all this I wanted to tell you about. I was going to write you a letter, but talking is much handier.'

'And you must go?'

'Yes.' He took a shilling out of his pocket and held it up in the dim light with a half-laugh. 'Never mind that; it's done. Will, what I wanted to say to you besides good-bye was this.' His voice had grown grave enough now. 'I have something to leave in your charge.'

I don't know why my heart stopped beating for a second, and then went on again quicker than before.

'Do you know what it is?' Cuthbert continued. 'The greatest treasure I have—the only thing in all the world that really belongs to me.'

'What?' I asked.

And he answered, 'Hildred.'

We had left the village behind by this time. We were on the bit of road before you reach the bridge, and the Castle was in front of us. Often in the evening, when the twilight has gathered, and the air is heavy with dew, and with a faint sweet smell of newly cut hay, I live that moment over again. I see Cuthbert's face turned towards me, pale and eager, in the half-darkness. I see the white road, and the moon just rising solemn and fiery red over the Castle. I feel the silence, except that the familiar rush of falling water, unheard for months, was beginning to sound in my ears again.

I never crossed the bridge afterwards, by night or day, and came within ear-shot of the waterfall, without hearing Cuthbert's voice say 'Hildred.'

For the next few minutes I don't know what he said. The dusty road—I noticed even then how dusty it was—seemed to rise up before my face. I put out my hand to hold by Cuthbert's arm. He thought that, being still lame, I was tired, and meant to lean on him, and he drew my arm over his shoulder, supporting me as we climbed up the grassy hill that was the short cut to the ruins. Presently I knew that he was saying—'It is hard for her.'

'Does Hildred know you have enlisted?'

'Yes, yes, poor child. I told her, and then, when it was too late, I found out how much I loved her.'

'Does she care for you?'

'Yes,' he answered very softly. 'Yes indeed, thank God.'

'But oh, Willie, you will take care of her for me. Don't let her forget me. I trust her to you entirely. Promise me you will be good to her. Watch over her for me.'

The tears were in his eyes. He was going away. It might be that I should never see him again. This was no time to think of my shattered hopes, my ruined life.

'If I could do any good,' I began to say. He interrupted me. 'You can—you can. It is everything to me. Let me think she has somebody near her who will be kind to her—who will comfort her if she is unhappy—who will never let them make her give me up.'

'She will not do that if she cares.'

'No, but I can't help fearing. Tell her how I love her. Talk to her about me. Promise me.' And he held out his hand.

I took it. I felt what a hard promise it was that he called on me to make—how little he guessed what he was asking of me. I knew how much it would cost me to keep it. A dread came over me like a shadow of the trouble that was to come through this.

But I would not listen. Cuthbert loved her, and she—yes, she loved him. He was going away, and he trusted me.

I only said two words, and then I had pledged myself, and shut the door on the long hope of years.

We were within the walls now. Cuthbert, with a few fervent words of thanks, turned towards Clifford's house, and I went home.

Granny gave a little cry of joy when I opened the kitchen door.

'My dear,' she said, hardly waiting to greet me, 'the very thing I have been wishing for, is for you to come home. We're in sad trouble, Willie. Do you know where Cuthbert is?'

'He came back with me just now.'

'I'm thankful for that. One couldn't tell what the poor boy might do. Willie, my dear, he and father had words,' said Granny, coming close and whispering mysteriously. 'It's about the money in the teapot, and it's all my fault.'

'Where's father?' I asked.

'Hush, he's upstairs now, counting It. He's always counting it, I think. That was where it was, you see. He was called away of a sudden when he was just putting something into the teapot, and he left the cupboard door open; and I came in and saw it. It was my old teapot, Willie, and I was glad to see it again, and so——'

'Granny, I want to go and speak to father.'

'So you shall, my dear; but just you wait and hear me first. And so, my dear—what was I going to say? It was my old teapot, and I used to keep odd halfpence in it, and stand it on the mantel-shelf. He took it away. I thought I'd lost it d'ye see, Willie?'

'Yes, Granny, I see. Will you——'

Granny held my arm tighter, and still whispering went on. 'My dear, I'm right vexed. I shouldn't ha' done it, but I meant no harm. When I saw my teapot, I took it thinking it was nobbut my coppers as made it heavy. Stephen missed it, and Cuthbert was there.'

'What did he say to Cuthbert?'

'My dear, they had words. Clifford, he came in, and Hildred. When I got into the room father sat there mazed-like about his money, and Cuthbert was standing as it might be here. I told them, and I brought back the teapot directly, my dear, but it was too late. Cuthbert flung out of the house and——. Hush, Willie, here's father coming downstairs.'

He came in. He looked surprised, and as it seemed to me only half pleased to see me.

'Father,' said my grandmother, 'Cuthbert's got back.'

My father looked up. 'I thought he'd come. What's he been about?'

'He's enlisted,' I said sadly.

I could not tell whether my father was surprised, or glad, or sorry. He said nothing, but I noticed that he gave me one or two quick looks from under his shaggy eyebrows.

'Father,' I said, 'you will see poor Cuthbert before he goes?'

'Humph! I suppose you know he's been beforehand with you with Hildred. Did he tell you that?'

'Yes, he told me. He meant no harm by me. He doesn't know.'

'I wish the lad had never come nigh the place.'

Just as he said this, the door was opened quickly, and Cuthbert came in. He went straight up to my father, the colour coming all over his face, and held out his hand.

'I'm going away to-morrow,' he said, speaking quickly, 'and as like as not I shall never come back again. I am come just to shake hands and thank you before I go, for all you've done for me; I know how much it's been.'

My father was taken by surprise. He put out his hand slowly to meet Cuthbert's.

'About that money,' he began, 'I made a mistake.'

'Thank you,' Cuthbert answered, colouring again. 'I'd sooner you wouldn't say anything of that.'

Still grasping my father's hand, he went on—

'I know I've often vexed you, but you won't be troubled with me any longer, and we part good friends—don't we?' he ended with his frank, sweet smile.

'I'm sure I wish you good luck, lad.'

Cuthbert turned round to me.

It was the one gleam of comfort on that dark night, that those two were at peace together before Cuthbert went away.

The two troubles coming so quick one upon another seemed to have confused me. I wanted time to understand them. Every thought brought a fresh sting, and they kept thronging into my mind, shifting and changing strangely.

Only one thing was clear: I had lost Cuthbert and Hildred both at once. He had gone back to her now, for more last words. I was used to thinking of them as belonging to me. But they belonged to each other now, and I was nothing to them,—not much at least.

Cuthbert was going away to-morrow. A while ago that would have seemed hard enough, but harder still, the Hildred I loved, and who I had thought loved me, was gone already.

Why do I talk about myself? They two who loved each other were the ones to be pitied. To-morrow, when Cuthbert was away, there would be time enough to think.

My father sat by the fire, with his hands and chin resting on his stick, but his eyes followed me whenever I moved. I was not used to being watched like that, and presently I went to the door.

'I say, boy,' he called after me.

I looked round.

'Don't you go and vex yourself. He's going away, and girls soon forget, you know.'

'Girls will be girls, Willie,' said Granny, meaning to be comforting.

I went outside and leaned against the wall. The moon was covered with clouds, and in the hushed darkness you could hear if a leaf stirred or a grasshopper chirped in the long grass.

'Girls soon forget.' Ay, but I had just promised not to let Hildred forget. Besides, she wasn't likely to forget Cuthbert. And did I even wish her to forget him? I did not know. What was the use of thinking?

How long Cuthbert stayed! Granny's flitting light went out upstairs. She, and my father too, were most likely quietly asleep, before I heard his step coming quickly through the darkness.

'You waited for me,' he said, coming up. 'Clifford kept me talking. Come in, will you? I must get my things together. I told you how it would be. Clifford wanted her to take her promise back, because I was going away.'

'She did not?'

He shook his head. 'But I have only you to count on that will help her,' he said sighing.

The packing-up was not a long business, but we went through it very slowly, though we talked little. Who ever said the parting words they had meant to speak at the last? Ours were very few.

Once Cuthbert looked up as he was kneeling on the floor beside the old chest that had held all our goods for so long. 'Will, I can't make speeches, but I am thinking very much to-night of the time you brought me home, and took me for your brother. There never was such a brother. I should like just for once to say, thank you.'

I put my hand on his shoulder and pressed it hard. It was lucky he did not want words, for I had none. We lay down near each other for the last time. I don't know whether Cuthbert cried before he went to sleep. I know I did.

It was soon over the next morning. As we went downstairs in the doubtful light, we could hear my father's heavy breathing. But poor Granny was down before us, with some breakfast ready that no one could eat, and a candle flaring with a sickly ray in the broadening daylight.

'I shall never see thee again, my dear,' Granny said, two slow tears rolling down her face; 'but be a good lad, and don't forget to say thy prayers.'

'I won't, Granny;' and as he kissed her she put her trembling old hand on his brown head and blessed him.

Then Cuthbert went out quickly, and I followed. He stood still for a minute and looked round. He could not have seen the old place look more beautiful than in its morning stillness; the birds were waking up here and there, and a glitter of dew and sunshine lay on the grass.

'Come,' he said, 'it is late.'

Hildred met us under the great yew tree. It had always been a trysting-place of ours, and we used to part there when we were children, coming back from school. Their great parting was to be there now.

He went up to her, and took her in his arms as if he could never leave her. Hildred was crying. She did not say much, but she clung to him and held him fast.

'Dear heart!' he said, kissing her hair softly. 'You must not cry so. Hush, Hildred!'

I did not know how much tenderness there could be in his voice till I heard those broken words—'See, here is our brother Willie. He is going to take care of you for me. He will watch over my dear love when I am gone.'

A few minutes more, and Cuthbert said, 'I must go.'

I did not see their parting. He came to me, grasped both my hands. 'God bless you. Take care of her. Don't let her forget me.'

'I am going with you.'

'No, go back to her. Stay and comfort her. Oh, be good to her, Willie!'

The distant sound of the fifes and drums came from the village down below.

'I shall be late.'

Cuthbert was gone. The cliff hid him directly. Those few hours had changed the world for me.

My brother was gone, and I had lost my love.

I went back, as he bade me, to Hildred. She had flung herself down on the ground where he left her, and was crying bitterly. I tried to take her hand and lift her up, but she pushed me away, turning from me and burying her face deeper in her hands.

'Hildred, don't cry like that.'

She shook her head impatiently, and rocked herself backwards and forwards like a child. I did not at all know what to do for her.

'I wish I could comfort you, Hildred.'

'You can't,' she said with a gasping sob.

'No I'm afraid nobody could——'

'Cuthbert could,' she interrupted.

It was the first time I had heard from herself that Cuthbert was more to her than I was, although, of course, I knew it before. The words stung me so much that I felt almost inclined to go away and leave her. But presently she took away her hands and looked up, pushing back the ruffled hair from her forehead. It was such a pitiful little face, her eyes wet and her cheeks crimsoned with tears.

'Oh dear, I am so unhappy,' she said.

I took her hand again.

'Poor little Hildred, I'm very sorry for you.'

'It's all your father's fault,' said Hildred, with a little impatient stamp of her foot upon the ground. 'How could he be so wicked?'

'It was a mistake,' I said, after a moment's pause.

'It was cruel of him. Oh, poor Cuthbert! Why did you let him go?'

'I, Hildred?'

'Yes, how could you? He will just go and be killed in the wars, and then you will be sorry.'

It was weak, almost unmanly, to mind her childish words, but I could not help it. I turned and walked away. The next moment she ran after me.

'Willie, I don't quite mean it; you know I don't.' She looked up with one of her own coaxing smiles. 'Don't be angry; I think being unhappy makes me cross, and I've got such a pain in my throat that I don't know what to do.'

And then she burst out crying again. Poor little Hildred, poor child!

That was a long, strange day. It seemed as if it ought by rights to be mid-day, when the sun had only been up for an hour or two, and it was difficult to understand how other people could be quietly waking up to their every-day business.

My father was having his breakfast. A few labourers were going across the bridge to their work. A flock of sheep with a cloud of dust round them, moved slowly along the road on the way to their pasture. Even Granny, with the tears all gone and her face as placid as if it had never been ruffled, was stirring about her morning's work.

'I wonder where poor Cuthbert'ill be now,' she said at dinner time; 'miles away by this time, I reckon. You'll be feeling a bit down-hearted, Willie, sure, without him.'

I felt rather more than a bit down-hearted, but it was no good telling Granny so.

'Well, it does seem strange to think that the lad's really gone,' she said again; 'don't it now, Stephen?' My father gave a sort of grunt that might mean anything. After dinner, as he stood by the chimney-piece, his eyes fell upon a many-clasped knife that belonged to Cuthbert. He looked round to see if any one was watching him; presently his fingers closed quietly over it, and it was dropped into his pocket. I took no heed, it was growing upon him, that habit of secretly hoarding any stray thing that came in his way.

Then began a time about which there is little to tell. Our life, except that Cuthbert was gone, moved on, seemingly unaltered. And yet the old time and the new were as different really, as a place that you have known in the sunshine looks when you see it again by moonlight. The place itself is unchanged, the outlines, the shape, the substance are still there, only the colouring is gone. All that gave warmth and brightness has been taken away. Grey and black and white tints alone remain.

Was it really only yesterday that I had come home, I thought—only yesterday that I was watching a sunset of clear gold and red in a blue sky, as I came along the road from Morechester, thinking my sunlit thoughts? In an hour or two I was to see Hildred. Home where she was, lay somewhere in the heart of that bright west.

When I reached the village the sun set for me indeed. The light faded in a minute from my cloudland of dreams.

The time hung all the more heavily on my hands, that I was too lame, for a while after my coming home, to be able to do much. It was a great comfort when I got strong again. Hard work, work that lasted from morning until night, was the best thing then. I did not care to think more than I could help. It only made things worse.

At first I could not make out rightly, how much or how little it was my duty to be with Hildred, remembering that now she was only a charge left to me by Cuthbert. It would have been easier to keep away altogether, but the poor child was unhappy. In the newness and strangeness of her first sorrow, she needed a great deal of comforting. No one had much time or thought to give to the remembrance of Cuthbert, so she came to me, reminding me that I had promised to be good to her.

It has always seemed to me that any trouble is the most easily borne in silence. Many words only make the pain worse, and take away from the patience and strength with which one has to bear it. But it was different for little Hildred. Child-like, or woman-like, it was a comfort to her to say how very sad she was. She came to tell how she missed Cuthbert; how long and dull the days seemed without the hope of seeing him; of how she often thought she heard his voice calling to her, and forgot that it was gone far beyond her hearing.

Anyone that has loved and lost a friend knows well all that she felt. But to her it was just as strange and dreadful as if the world, since it began, had not been full of partings. It was so new to her to wake up in the morning, wondering what the weight upon her heart could be—so sorrowful, when everything was quiet, to cry herself to sleep.

We were not the only people in that part of the country who had cause to rue the visits of recruiting parties. There were the Moores, cousins of her own, whom Martha Clifford was never tired of holding up as an example. How often have I heard her exhort Hildred to patience, by telling her how much less to be pitied she was than the poor old Moores! Hildred did not think so, inasmuch as a new sorrow always seems worse than an old one, and the trouble that had come upon the Moores was of old standing now.

Three or four years ago their only son did, what Cuthbert had just done—enlisted, leaving his father and mother to get on as best they could without him.

It was hard on them certainly, for they were growing old, and had looked to David as the bread-winner for the future. 'If you knew what it was to want bread, Hildred,' said Martha, 'you would not have so much time for fretting about Cuthbert.'

I don't think it had come to the Moores wanting bread, but I remember well the talk of the country side, and how it was said the ferry-house over the Wynn would soon have other tenants, for an old man like Moore could never manage the ferry-boat by himself.

Certainly the river at the ferry ran very swift and strong, and the old boat was a heavy one. Moore's house, a tumble-down stone building, comfortable enough inside, but a bleak sort of place to look at, stood hanging over the river, at the corner where the road comes out of a winding pass through the hills and ends at the ferry. It was the only way the farmers and people living up in the hills had of getting to Morechester. The boat carried across many a load of cattle for Morechester Market, many a man and horse bound for the Market Cross. Still the place was so wild and unfrequented that passengers were rare things, and the ferryman often worked in his strip of garden, and tended his goats, for days together, without the boat being once called for. There it lay, chained just beneath the house, with its ponderous oars, as big, clumsy, and flat-bottomed a thing as you would wish to see.

Cuthbert and I knew it well in the days of our rambles over the country. We knew old Moore and Moore's wife, and Elfrida their servant-maid, and David the son, who got so tired of the ferry-boat, and the lonely house, and the noise of the river sweeping by, that he went for a soldier, and left the place more silent and deserted than before.

In time old Moore fell sick. It was then that they began really to miss David; for what was to become of them, now his father could row the ferry-boat no longer? Then Elfrida, their faithful maid, went down and unloosed the boat, and rowed it across herself, with her strong arms. And she told her old master and mistress not to fret, for she would do her best—they should not leave the old ferry as long as she had hands to serve them.

Elfrida—I remember her well—was a tall strong lass, with a grave, faithful-looking, kindly face, and a pair of steady brown eyes. Hers was a true heart and a stout arm. The old people had been good to her, and she was not going to leave them at their need. But it was a rough life for a woman, especially as winter drew on, and the wind blew wildly from the hills, and the river rose.

Farmers coming home late at night from Morechester Market, wanted to be ferried across, and it was bitter work unchaining the boat and pushing out into mid-stream in the darkness. Elfrida grew to dread the shout and whistle from the other side, that summoned the ferry-boat to go across, but she never said anything. It had to be done, and she was glad to think of the old couple, comfortable under their own roof, often in bed and asleep, not knowing that she was pushing the boat along across the black river, with the rain dashing in her face, and the current striving against the whole strength of her arms, to sweep the boat down-stream.

One night, a very stormy night in November, Elfrida heard the unwelcome call come across the water. The wind and the rush of the stream almost drowned it; still there it was, and often repeated, as if the owner of the voice was getting impatient. So she lighted her lantern and pushed off, guiding the boat as well as she could by the rope that was stretched across the river. Her passenger was a farmer going home from Morechester, and as he led his horse into the boat Elfrida saw that he walked unsteadily. She was used to that sort of thing on market days, but to-night, as they started to cross back again, the man was pulling at his horse, making it move restlessly. Elfrida spoke sharply, bidding him be still and keep the horse quiet. The farmer answered angrily, and moved suddenly from his place—the boat rocked—there was a sudden splash in the water, a loud cry, and he was gone.

Elfrida knew that the current was running swiftly, and that a moment would carry him beyond help. She did not stay to think, but plunged in after him. She was a brave swimmer, and a brave woman, but the stream was hurling along, and the night was dark. What came after the shock of the chill water she could never quite tell. She knew that she clutched the man's hair as he rose, and then all the rest was confusion, until she felt someone dragging them both up the bank, and saw lights flashing in her eyes. Another party of homeward-bound farmers had come up, and pulled them in, but not until she had struggled with her burden close to the shore.

That night's deed made Elfrida famous in the country round. People went all the way from Morechester to look at her; but she remained just as simple as ever, rowing her boat quietly, and speaking little to any one.

It fell out strangely enough, that David Moore belonged to the regiment which our Cuthbert entered. They met in the barracks when Cuthbert first joined, and sailed in the same ship for India. We heard of their being together from David's wife. One evening Elfrida, going across to fetch a passenger who had called for her, found a little woman waiting at the river's edge, with a bundle in her arms, who said that she was David's wife. He was gone to India and had sent her home to his father, and here was Baby.

Elfrida thought in her heart that they had hard work enough to keep themselves, and now here was David, instead of coming back to help, sending his wife and child home to be a burden. She rowed the stranger across silently, and when they landed took the bundle in her arms—and it was Baby. Ah, well, perhaps twice in a life-time one may see as beautiful a child as baby was. Loose tumbled curls that looked like gold, shone on Elfrida's eyes out of the bundle—eyes like periwinkles, bright blue stars, she said, looked straight up and smiled at her. A pouting rosebud of a mouth laughed outright, and baby put out a firm round dimpled hand to clap her on the cheek.

All in a moment Elfrida's heart bowed down before its lord and master. 'Here is something to work for, early and late, night and day,' she thought to herself; but she did not say so, only she clasped the bundle that had suddenly grown so precious, tightly in her arms, and carried it into the house.

Henceforward baby reigned like a king at the ferry, by right, I suppose, of his crown of golden locks.

So Elfrida worked on with a will; David's little London-bred wife sat indoors with the old people, and both they and we thought of the soldier laddies who were away at the wars.

Day by day I talked to Hildred about Cuthbert, and told her how proud she would be of him when he came home safe from the wars. And Hildred believed all I said. It was easy to comfort her for the moment, only the next day it was all to do over again. I used to build gorgeous castles in the air for her, feeling all the time that it would half break my heart to see any of them come true. Yet there was a pleasure too in watching Hildred, listening with her eyes bent down, and the long dark lashes that made her face look like a cloudy day sweeping her cheeks despondently. And when at last she raised them it was just as if the sun came out suddenly. She was like a child to talk to. I sometimes thought, what a slight thing she was for two strong men to have set their hearts upon.

And thus a long time slipped away. Cuthbert left us in the summer, and winter was well on before Hildred got her first letter from him. That letter, written at sea and sent home by a vessel which met theirs, how much we all thought of it!

We stood round Hildred, waiting for news, as she held the big brown letter in both hands, eager, flushed, and laughing, yet half unwilling to break its great red seal. She unfolded it slowly and read it out, her finger pointing along the lines. It was a beautiful letter—everybody said so—and yet how little it told us about him! It left him well, he wrote, and he liked a soldier's life, but he often remembered home, and thought of his own true love by night and day. And he sent his kind respects to all inquiring friends. That was all.

In time, the letter too became a thing that had come long ago, and the winter dragged on into spring. Hildred grew slowly more accustomed to Cuthbert's absence, and I knew better what a hard task it was that he had left me.

I missed my brother Cuthbert sorely. I had never loved him more than since he took from me unwittingly that which I cared for most in life. With him all the life and cheeriness of our house had gone away—we who remained were so grave and old.

Indeed Granny, the oldest of the three, was the most talkative, perhaps the happiest. The twilight of her life was closing round her, and, looking back over the long way she had come, she could talk cheerfully over what had once troubled her the most, but which now lay dimly remembered in the distance behind her.

Sometimes she reminded me of my mother, by the expressions which she used. And I thought Mistress Dorothy was right when she said that there is a language which the great Master teaches to all his scholars, different as they may be to one another, and that it grows the more easy to them the nearer they are to leaving school and being taken home to their Father's house.

'Stephen will be vexed,' Granny said, 'to think that I should go; but it's quite time, Willie, and I shall be glad;' and she went on, laying her hand on mine, 'To think of me, my dear, poor me, with a golden crown upon my head!'

Dear old Granny, with the white hair under her mob-cap, and her withered, aged face. Ah, well! would not all the lines be smoothed away before the crown of life was laid upon her brow?

It may be that my father saw her failing, and was 'vexed' by it, but he said nothing. Besides, Granny toiled that he should still find a bright fire and tidy room to greet him, and Hildred was always coming in to help her. Granny said the sight of her sweet face made her feel young again. 'Her cheeks are like the red roses that grew over our porch when I was a girl. They used to say I was like one of those roses once, for I was a pretty girl, my dears, though you would not believe it now. I don't think girls are so pretty now-a-days as they used to be when sister Nancy and I were young.'

'I am sure they are not, Granny,' Hildred would say laughing, and putting her red-rose cheek fondly against Granny's wrinkled face. 'Do you want me to do anything more this evening?'

'Bless you, pretty child, no. Run away with Willie. Young folks will ever be courting, and it's right they should—quite right.' And Granny nodded wisely. I felt the blood coming up into my cheeks.

'I think Granny sometimes mixes me up with Cuthbert,' I said.

'Perhaps she does,' Hildred answered. 'Yes, she is growing very old.'

One day my father chanced to be by when Granny was putting away the tea things, a task she never let any one take from her for fear of accidents. 'Young folks are careless at times, poor dears.' But Granny's steadiness of hand was not so great as her good will, or else her eyes failed her, for presently a cup fell down and was smashed to pieces. She looked startled, sorry, and half-frightened, as she found my father close behind her, and she gave up the rest of the cups to him quite meekly.

'Yes, Stephen, I see. You needn't talk about it. I'm not fit to do it any more. The children'll have to do the best they can, and I'll just sit still and wait. Don't you be afraid.'

She went and sat down in the chimney-corner, and twirled her thumbs rapidly one over the other. By-and-by the vexed look went out of her face, and the patience that made it quite beautiful came back.

'Where's Hildred?' my father asked me, after vainly trying to join the pieces of the broken cup together with his big fingers.

I said she had gone home.

'You should ha' married the girl, Will,' he said roughly, 'and have saved all this breaking and wasting. And then there would have been somebody to see to her,' motioning towards his mother.

'You know I couldn't.'

'I don't say as how you could then, but that's not now. Yon lad has forgotten her long since, I'll lay. They soldiers never hold to one thing long together.'

'Cuthbert forgotten Hildred!' I said. 'Not he.'

'Have it your own way,' he answered; 'only we want to get hold of some woman that'll keep things straight, that's clear.'

It was the first time for very long that he had touched on that old string. It was not by very many the last. The notion that I must bring home a wife, to 'keep things straight,' and to take care of Granny, had taken a strong hold upon him. If I was a fool, and would not marry Hildred, I must find just some one else; but he had far rather have her about the place than a stranger: he was used to the lass.

In vain I told him that she cared for Cuthbert, and would not marry me.

'Just you ask her. A bird in hand's worth two in the bush any day. Tell her I'll be a father to her.'

Once it might have been, not now.

I could only try my best to prevent him from missing any of his comforts, and turn my hand to everything. But I was clumsy: the woman's work did not come easily.

And now Cuthbert had been gone for more than two years. A second letter came from him some six months after the first. Since then we had heard nothing.

Of course no one could expect to hear often from those out-of-the-way parts of the world.

There were always plenty of good reasons to give Hildred, when she wondered, as she often did, why she never got a letter. But after months and months had passed away in silence, a thought of fear we did not like to face, which we tried to stifle and forget, began slowly to creep into our minds.

It seemed as if the clouds grew thicker as the third winter of Cuthbert's absence darkened over us.

My words of hope and reassurance lost the ring of truth: they did not comfort Hildred as they used to do.

'It's no good, Willie,' she would say. 'You can't make yourself believe it all.'

No more I could. Even to my own ears my reasoning sounded hollow and unsatisfying.

We knew that David Moore's wife had got a letter more than once since we had heard, but—it seemed strange, her husband never so much as mentioned Cuthbert's name. Whenever I could spare the time, which was not often, for it was a long and rough journey, I went over to the ferry, in the faint hope that they might have tidings for us. There was a sort of tie between us and this household, where also there was watching and waiting.

They did not watch as we did. They had less uncertainty, and perhaps more patience. Moore's quiet little wife never lost her placid look for long together, even though one of the letters she received was written by a comrade of David's, to tell her that he was wounded and could not write himself. He bade his wife not take on, for he was getting better, and she believed, and obeyed him implicitly. As for the old father and mother, their daily comforts were their first thought. The draught that came from the kitchen window, and the fine crop of potatoes in the garden, occupied them full as much as any fears for David. The pity that Martha Clifford still bestowed on the poor Moores was wasted. As long as they had Elfrida to work for them, they wanted nothing else.

What they would have done without her, no one could guess. Elfrida never told them that she might have left them at any moment, had she so willed it, for a comfortable home of her own. But so it was.

I used to watch her with great interest. The man whom she had saved from drowning did not forget what a debt of gratitude he owed her. He was for ever coming down to the ferry, only, it seemed, for the pleasure of being rowed over the river by Elfrida, and of staring at her all the way across.

Each time he tried to get through a set speech of thanks, that with much trouble he had put together, and each time he forgot it in the middle. It did not signify, for Elfrida took little heed of him. She told him once, that she had done but her duty, and that he had no call to thank her, and after that she wondered why he came so often, and ferried him quietly backwards and forwards all in the way of business.

He was a widower, the tenant of a small but thriving sheep-farm up yonder in the hills, where abode peace and plenty, much live stock, and many children.

Nothing was wanting but a mistress; and after a while he grew to think that Elfrida was one of the right sort, that she would make a kind mother to the children and a comfortable partner for himself.

The good man began to paint glowing pictures of the place he could take her home to, if she had but a mind to come. I don't think Elfrida turned quite a deaf ear. It did sound very pleasant—that well-to-do homestead, with the cows in the shed, and the poultry in the yard, the flocks on the hill-side, the dairy and the pigs. Elfrida felt kindly to the honest farmer in his best red waistcoat, who wanted to make her 'missus' of all these good things. And then how comfortable it would be never to have to cross the ferry on the winter nights that were coming round again, and to be able to put away for ever a certain passing feeling of uneasy wonder that had troubled her once or twice, as to what would become of her when she grew old.

Yes, that was all very well. Still there was Baby. She could never really think of leaving him. What would he do—poor little Davy—if she were gone? What would any of them do indeed? but that first question went nearest to Elfrida's heart.

After she had been listening silently all the way across, to the farmer's description of that place that must surely be very like Paradise, Elfrida lifted up her eyes, and there stood baby on the bank, clapping his hands and shouting at the boat. Baby, with a torn frock and a scratched face, and little bare muddy legs, yet beautiful exceedingly. Elfrida's heart gave a great thump, as it always did when she saw him. 'No, I never could leave Baby.'

'But I've got a baby too, up there at home,' the farmer pleaded.

She looked at him. 'Ah, but he's never like our Baby.'

The farmer scratched his head, and thought of his poor little chap at home, the thin, white-cheeked boy that never would thrive after his mother died and left him. Then he turned to Davy, and saw how his blue eyes shone, and how proudly he tossed back his yellow curls, and laughed his ringing laugh. And how Elfrida looked at him!

No, little Joe was not like that.

'Still, it seems a pity,' he said, 'don't it now, when things are so comfortable, as I've been telling you?'

Elfrida did not even hear him, for Davy, with the air of a king, was allowing her to carry him up the steep bank home to supper.

One day when I was there, the farmer brought down Joe to the ferry, with a kind of hope that the sight of Davy's little motherless rival might touch Elfrida's heart.

The visit did not turn out well. Davy made a bad beginning by knocking his guest down, without the smallest provocation except that he did not like him. Thereafter Joe's shrill cries of fear and anger could by no manner of means be hushed. He stood clasping his big daddy's leg with gasping sobs, a weak, pale-faced, poor-spirited little mortal. 'So-ho, Joe, quiet,' his father kept on saying, patting and smoothing him down, rather as if he had been a cart-horse.

Elfrida, on her side, was holding back Davy, trying to scold him, and make him beg Joe's pardon; but there he stood, nothing daunted, like a prince, Elfrida said, his head thrown back, his eyes sparkling, and one small fist doubled, ready as soon as he was released for another hit at poor terror-stricken Joe.

It did not do. Joe was taken home to the hills, without having greatly aided his father's cause, and the farmer was fain to fall back again upon patience as his best helper after all.

And indeed so were we. I had to go back to Wyncliffe that evening with the old answer, 'No, Hildred, no news yet.'

'I am so tired, so tired of waiting,' she said wearily.

She was standing on the hearth-stone, in the red light of the fire. The rest of the room was dark, for the early dusk of winter had gathered outside. Only the glow from the burning embers fell on her bent face and clasped hands.

Her words sounded all the more dreary that they were spoken in a lowered tone, for Granny, who of late had ceased to take much notice of anything, sat as usual, half asleep, in the chimney-corner.

But she must have heard in part, for she roused up suddenly, and asked, 'Who is tired? What is she talking of?'

We did not answer for a minute, and then I said, 'Only of Cuthbert, Granny.'

'Ay, Cuthbert. Is the lad here?'

'Oh Granny, no,' said Hildred, 'we wish—we wish he were.'

'He will come,' said Granny, raising herself up and speaking in a strange, clear tone. You will see him, never fear. It may be a long time first—' She looked through the firelight into the darkness beyond, as if her eyes were fixed on something that we could not see; 'a long time, but wait patiently, pretty child; wait, Willie. You will see him again.'

Hildred came close to me, and, half-frightened, laid her hand on my arm. We both stood looking wonderingly at Granny, from whose eyes the unaccustomed light was already fading away. The voice and look had given me an odd sort of thrill, and Hildred whispered, 'Willie, do you think she saw anything?'

'No—no—I don't think so. Granny.'

I spoke to her, and Hildred bent down and touched her, but she had sunk back again into the half slumber from which she had roused herself for those few minutes.

'Don't let us disturb her now,' Hildred said. 'We must do as she told us—wait. We will ask her again to-morrow.'

But when to-morrow came, our question remained unasked and unremembered. We only thought how her own long waiting was over, her hopeful patience changed into perfect joy. For Granny had gone from us. In the morning we found her lying with the winter light streaming across her face. We thought she was asleep. So she was. She had fallen into the quiet sleep of death.

One could scarcely call this a sudden sorrow, or a bitter sorrow. We had long known that it must come, and to her it was very welcome. Only we missed her. The chimney-corner looked empty, and we went in and out without the kindly, cheerful word that for so many years had been used to greet us. Granny had been very good to us.

Neither Hildred nor I could forget the words that she had spoken about Cuthbert on the last evening of her life. We looked upon them as a kind of prophecy. Without saying anything to one another, I believe we both began at that time to have a vague feeling that he was near to us—that he was coming home.

I know I never heard the bell ring at the Castle gate, without a quick thought that it might perhaps be him. I have seen Hildred stand by the half-hour together gazing at the bit of road by the bridge, where people coming from the village up to the Castle could first be seen. She got into a way of looking over her shoulder, and from side to side as she walked, as if she half expected that some one would appear from behind an angle of the broken walls, or from under the shadow of a tower. For the first time in her life she did not like to cross the ruins alone after nightfall.

'The girl seems as though she was living in a maze,' Martha Clifford said one day. 'I don't know what she would be at.' And she went behind Hildred unawares, and put her hand on her shoulder. Hildred gave a great start and turned round with the colour rushing into her cheeks.

'Why, child, what ails you?' her sister-in-law asked, not unkindly, 'that you stand there staring at nothing, and shake like a leaf if one does but touch you?'

'I don't know,' said Hildred, looking down again at the bridge, across which two people were moving slowly, and sighing as she saw them turn away along the river side.

The sun was setting in a frosty sky over the trees, and its red light shone through the bare branches and was reflected in the stream. It was Christmas Eve.

'Watching will bring no one back the quicker,' said Martha, 'and it's Christmas time. You'd better be merry with the rest, child.'

Hildred looked after her as she walked away with wistful eyes. 'Oh Willie,' she said, turning round to me, 'I should so like a merry Christmas. Everybody seems to be having one, all but us. And I thought maybe he would be let come home because it is Christmas, and then we should be merry too.'

'You must wait a little longer, Hildred.'

'That's what you always say; but I'm tired of waiting, and I want so much to be happy.'

It had seemed as if people were very merry in the village down yonder, to-day. The one shop-window was turned into a bower of holly and evergreens, stuck all about with oranges and rosy apples. To almost every house some one had come home to spend Christmas among their own folk. The village-green was full of pleased faces, and shouting children, and laughter, and glad greetings. Couple after couple of happy lovers had met Hildred, and wished her a merry Christmas as they passed; and though she gave the wish back heartily, yet each time the great longing to be happy like the rest swelled higher in her heart.

All day she had been working with the other boys and girls at dressing the little old grey church for Christmas Day. They had twined green wreaths round the thick short pillars and over the low arches, and a bunch of holly was stuck in each corner of the square pews. Under the east window, woven in shining holly leaves and scarlet berries, the words gleamed out, 'Behold we bring you glad tidings of great joy.'

They were the last thing that met Hildred's eyes as she turned under the porch, and looked back into the church. And her heart went out to meet them. Will it not be forgiven her, that in her sore longing for 'glad tidings,' she passed over their grand meaning, the mighty message of joy unto all people, and took them to herself as an omen that some good news was coming to her at last?

Christmas certainly is not always a merry time. Nay, often it is sadder than all the rest of the year; and yet I believe that people must be beginning to grow old before they quite give up an unreasonable half-formed idea that they have in some sort a right to be happier than usual at Christmas. Old custom has linked the words 'merry' and 'Christmas' together, and it is hard to put them asunder in our thoughts, though in action it is easily done.

There is a great deal that makes Christmas look and sound cheerful;—roaring fires in farm-house kitchens; holidays from school and work; larders well stocked with Christmas cheer; the church bells, that ring their merriest peals, chiming and pealing, and clashing out every change that the ringers can put together.

And the dear old carols; their quaint rhymes set to music full of odd flourishes, familiar since the childish days when we lay wide awake on Christmas night, listening breathlessly to the voices in the distance, and doubting whether the 'angelick host' of which they sang could have made more melodious music.

We were great at Christmas carols in Wyncliffe. Everybody that could sing—and some that only thought they could—went down to the schoolhouse, for the few weeks before Christmas, on the nights that the singers practised.

Cuthbert and I had been 'waits' ever since we were little schoolboys, with small shrill voices that were always being left behind when the tune swept up suddenly to a high note far above our reach, or rolled down into a manly grumble somewhere in the very heart of the bass. Standing close together and singing with might and main, we could not hear our own voices, but could only see each other's mouths wide open. Our childish piping was buried out of hearing beneath the rude deep men's voices, and the clear notes of the women, the scraping flourishes of the fiddles, and the tones of the flute that whistled and stopped, and lost its way, and found it again, when nobody was expecting it, like a gust of wandering wind.

Things improved for us as time passed on. I played the violin myself in these latter days, and for several years Cuthbert's voice made the fortune, and was the great boast, of the waits. It was a story often told, how a stranger, hearing us sing one Christmas night, turned out to be the organist of Morechester Minster, and wanted Cuthbert afterwards to join the choir of the great church. We did not wonder. It was but natural. What musician would not have wished for that sweet rich voice of his, that seemed to blend all the others together and bring them into harmony?

Ah, well, that was the Christmas before Cuthbert went away. We had learnt to do without him now. Nevertheless, the carols, like many other things, were no longer quite what they used to be.

Hildred and Matt Clifford and I had been round with the waits this year for several nights.

It chanced that I was late in joining them on the evening of Christmas Day, and as I crossed the village green my father met and stopped me.

'I say, lad, you haven't heard the news.'

There was light enough for me to see the strange, awed look on his face, and to feel that whatever the news was, it had shocked him, and made him half-unwilling, and yet eager, to tell it. Besides, he had just a shade of that triumph which people's faces wear when they have foretold that something has come to pass.

'That boy Cuthbert has got killed in the wars.'

I stood still and stared at him.

'Yes, he has got killed, poor lad,' my father repeated. 'Esther Reynolds brought the news. Young Moore, over at the ferry, has come home, and she had it from him.'

Had Hildred heard it? That must be thought of first of all. Would there be time to stop them from telling her suddenly?—Hildred, who sometimes fancied that he was coming home, that he was near to her.

Old Esther Reynolds knew it—the greatest gossip in the village, to whom the telling of a bit of news was as the breath of life. No thought for Hildred would keep her silent, if she had the chance of spreading such a story as this. There was not a moment to be lost.

It was a clear frosty night, and the stars were shining. Every distant noise sounded distinct and close at hand. My own footsteps rang on the frozen road.

Very soon I heard them singing, the well-known carol waxing louder every minute as I got near to them, sounding so strangely discordant to my ears, which were still tingling with the death news.

Voices were singing, and church-bells chimed, the stars gleamed and sparkled like silver fire over the living, busy, holiday-keeping world, and Cuthbert was dead.

For a minute I stood still and gathered breath. How was it possible to tell Hildred, whose voice I fancied I could hear already rising clear above the rest—how would it be possible to go on and tell her that her lover lay dead, killed, buried in a far distant grave? What would she say? How could she bear it, when the mere thought of the words that must be spoken were making my heart beat too heavily for speech? Need I say anything yet? Surely nobody would tell her to-night. I would keep near her, and when this singing, that was such a mockery, was over, perhaps some words would be given me, some words, if such there were, that would make the blow fall less cruelly.

But the next moment I started forward again. There was a confused murmur, a movement in the group; some of the people stopped singing, and then came a sudden, sharp, half-choked cry, and the music ceased altogether.

They had got a lantern; some one held it up, and the light fell on the face of Esther Reynolds standing there among them. I was too late.

Someone called out my name, and then Hildred, ghastly white in the cold star-light, turned and met me, with her hands stretched out before her.

'It isn't true! Willie, tell me it isn't true.'

'My poor Hildred!'

I took the hands so pitifully held out, but she snatched them away, throwing them wildly up into the air, and then with a long sobbing moan she fell down upon her knees.

The women gathered round her compassionately, and raised her up from the hard road, weeping with her, and trying to quiet her by kindly pitying words, of which she took no heed.

Esther Reynolds was wringing her hands, and saying over and over again, 'Oh poor lamb! I would not have told if I'd known she'd have taken on like this. What can I do for her, poor lamb?'

What could she do? What could any one do, but stand by helplessly, watching the poor child struggle through the first bitterness of her sorrow? No one could bear the blow instead of her, or ease her pain.

I daresay her brother Matt did what was the best for her. He laid his hand on her shoulder and bade her quietly come home. He had looked on in perplexed silence for the last few minutes, while he unscrewed his flute slowly, and put it away in his pocket. He did not try now to say anything comforting, but held his sister up in his strong grasp, for she was trembling too much to stand alone, and he led her away, her face hidden in her cloak.

There were no more carols sung that year at Wyncliffe. A blank silence fell upon those who were left. Presently some one said, 'Poor Hildred!'

They asked who brought the news, and Esther dried her eyes and began eagerly to tell all she knew. I stood listening with the rest. It was not much to hear, though told in many words. David Moore had come back wounded from India, to his home at the ferry-house. He was in Cuthbert's regiment, and he brought word that Cuthbert had been killed.

'Poor Cuthbert!' said many sorrowful voices. They all loved him. Not one here but thought of him kindly, and had been friends with him in the days that were gone. And I. Oh Cuthbert, God knows I loved you, God knows I mourned for you, bitterly, bitterly.

It was ended then, the long hope, the fear we would not name, the watching for him who was never to come back. It was all over, and he was dead.

Dead! that was a hard thing to believe. For there was no farewell to remember, no day to look back upon as the last day of his life; no single parting word; only a great blank and silence in our thoughts. He had been, and he was not. That was all. We should never know for certain the day nor the hour when we lost him. Only on some day, long ago now, when thinking nothing, we were busy about our common work, he had been dying a soldier's painful death, with perhaps a farewell word for us in his brave heart, that would never reach us.

It had always seemed as if we feared so much, but we knew now how far stronger than our fears our hope had been. The blow could scarcely have fallen more heavily months ago, before we began to have the vague dread of evil that had darkened into utter night.

I thought it all over as I went slowly homewards, with a dull quietness that it was very strange to feel. I remembered him as a boy, and could recall his great love to me, without more than a numb heartache, and a feeling of wonder that I was not more unhappy.

I thought of a future in which I should be always lonely, and Hildred for ever broken-hearted, with a sort of pity for us both, as if I were but a looker-on at our lives.

And yet I envied Hildred; for when I went late at night to ask after her, they told me that she had sobbed herself to sleep. For the moment she had escaped from trouble, and her stormy sorrow all left behind, she had gone away into the land of dreams, where tears are not.

For me there were neither dreams nor sleep. All night I sat in my father's elbow-chair beside the fire, not caring to go to bed. At first the flames kept me company as they rose and fell and flickered, lighting the room fitfully. The stars shone in, glittering through the window. Then the fire died down to a dull glow. It grew black, with only a red spark here and there. It went quite out, and the room grew very cold. The night waned. A mist rose up and covered the stars. It became darker and darker. Then I suppose I fell asleep, for when I looked again, the grey chill of a winter's dawn was in the room. It was no longer to-day, but yesterday, that we heard of Cuthbert's death.

I dreaded seeing Hildred in her sorrow. It made me feel strange to her, as if I should not know how to greet her, and that instead of her familiar self, she would be to me as a mourner upon whom a great grief had newly fallen! Poor little Hildred. The strangeness all went away, and was forgotten directly we met, and she ran to me and held my hands, crying, 'Oh Willie, I wanted you. He belonged to you and me.'

'But I can't feel as if it could be true,' she said presently. 'I keep thinking all the time—of course it's foolish—that perhaps old Esther Reynolds made a mistake after all, and that David Moore meant some one else. Eh, Willie?'

I shook my head. 'But I can go to see him, and ask him about it,' I said, after thinking a little.

'Oh, will you? And ask him to tell us,'—her voice failed, and she shuddered,—'ask him whether it was great pain, and if it was soon over. I cannot bear to think he suffered long.'

Ah, Hildred! so you too had thought of those dreary questions that had been haunting me all night.

'I will go to-day,' I said. And that evening I was at the Ferry House.

It was generally a bleak place enough; but this afternoon winter sunshine was giving it a cheerful look, and a holly tree, brilliant with berries, made a bright spot of colour near the door.

They say trouble makes people selfish. I scarcely remembered until now that what brought us sorrow had filled this house with rejoicing.

The picture of home gladness that met my eyes as I went in, came upon me in sharp contrast with Hildred's tear-stained cheeks and heavy eyes.

Some one had stuck holly-branches all over the room, usually so bare. The fire blazed cheerily. On one side sat David Moore's little wife, quiet still, but with a smile of great contentment on her face, looking down at her husband, who sat on a wooden stool at her feet, with his arms resting on her lap and his eyes fixed on her.

There was a handkerchief bound round his head, and when he turned round I saw that he would have looked very ill if it had not been for the radiant happiness that shone from his pale face. His mother, sitting close by, put out her hand every now and then, and touched his red coat to make sure it was really him. Even old Moore had roused up. And in the back-ground little Davy stood on the dresser with one arm round Elfrida's neck, a bunch of holly in his hand, and a scarlet handkerchief, in imitation of his father, twisted in his curly hair.

David Moore did not look like the bearer of evil tidings. The question I came to ask seemed sadly out of place among these happy people.

But there was a pause after they had greeted me, and then I had to ask it.

'You were with Cuthbert Franklyn in India?'

'Yes, I was.' He stopped a moment and then said more slowly, 'I suppose you know he's dead.'

It was true, then—quite true. I stood silent. Little Davy laughed merrily, and Elfrida stopped him with a grave 'hush.'

Presently Moore said—

'We lost ever so many fellows in our regiment, and I never looked to come home myself.'

His wife put her hand softly on to his head as he sat at her feet, and he looked up smiling, and forgot everything else.

'Where was it Cuthbert Franklyn died?' I asked at last.

'Killed at the battle of Conjeveram, fighting against Tippoo Saib, same day as I got this wound in the head.'

'You are sure? Did you see him after he was killed?'

'No, I got my wound early in the day. I was left for dead. They never thought I should have lived. I was a long time in hospital. When I saw some of our fellows again, after I was invalided home, they told me that Franklyn was among the missing.'

He could tell me no more than this. And I stood there, thinking sorrowfully over it. I felt that I brought a dreary silence over that happy party. David Moore and his wife spoke to each other in low voices. The old father fell asleep, and Elfrida carried little Davy out of the room.

I turned to go away; Moore followed me to the door, wished he had brought me better news, and said he would have come over to see his cousin Martha Clifford, but that his furlough was so short. Only three days to be with wife and child after this long time! So we shook hands, and he went back to his bright fireside.

It was too late to go home that night. The short winter's day was over before I left the ferry, and it was afternoon again, a dark, cold, Sunday afternoon, before I got to Wyncliffe next day.

The church-bells were still ringing for evening service when I came into the village. Hildred was to meet me at church, for the Vicar never liked the musicians to be away if they could help it, and I played the fiddle up in the gallery every Sunday.

Nearly everybody had gone in when I reached the steps leading up to the churchyard. Only Hildred was standing under the lych gate, and watching for me in the failing light.

If it had been good news I was bringing her, I should have quickened my steps when I saw her.

Now I did not look up, but walked slower, wishing that something would come to prevent my having to destroy the last hope she had.

I think she understood. She came two steps down towards me. The church-bells stopped ringing.

'Willie,' she said in a whisper.

I shook my head.

'Was it true, then?'

'All true.'

She drew back, covering her face with her hands, but she was very quiet. A blow in all its heaviness cannot fall twice.

We stood together for some minutes. She was shivering so, that I told her to go home, but she shook her head, and passed slowly, without speaking, under the church porch.

I went up into the gallery. It was the Sunday after Christmas, and the day had been so short that the light was already waning before the service began. This afternoon, too, a snow-storm was coming, and the heavy clouds made it duskier than usual. There were two faint lights glimmering over the reading-desk. When the last heavy footstep had sounded along the aisle, and there was silence through the church, it was almost out of darkness that the vicar's voice came, reading in a quiet even tone the opening words of the service: 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.'

Broken hearts! It was good that God did not despise them, since there must be so many in the world.

---

My father was anxious to be told all that David Moore had said. He asked me many questions, and listened to every word I could remember with an interest that would have puzzled me, but that my thoughts were so full of Cuthbert, that it seemed natural every one should be as much taken up about him as we were.

'Then Moore didn't say whether he was killed directly, or how long he lived after he got his wound?'

'No, Moore was hurt himself; he did not hear until long after.'

'How long?'

'Two or three months, I think, he said, when he got back to his regiment.'

'Well.'

'They told him that poor Cuthbert was among the missing.'

'Only missing,' said my father, leaning forward; 'not killed.'

I paused a moment. It had not struck me before.

'But then it's the same thing, for sure,' my father went on eagerly, 'quite the same thing. It's just the way they put it. I didn't mean to throw a doubt on his being killed, mind, Willie.'

'Moore did say missing.'

'Ay, missing or killed. 'Tis the same thing. Now don't you go and fash yourself for a word. The poor lad's killed, sure enough. There's no manner of doubt about that.'

He bent over and touched my arm, to enforce his words. I could see he was vexed with himself for having asked the question, and wanted to make me forget it.

'I suppose they would have known,' I said, after thinking over it, and the hope that had glimmered for an instant went out again—not quite, though. The certainty was shaken since it had been questioned; and yet David Moore had seemed to have no doubt. 'He's dead, you know;' I remembered his words well.

'To be sure they knew,' said my father, watching me, as I saw, 'I've thought myself how it would be this long time past. I never looked to see him come home again.'

My father seldom troubled himself to speak so much. It was almost too much for the object he wanted to gain, of lulling my doubts to rest. By-and-by, he said rather hesitatingly, 'I say, lad, you wouldn't go and tell Hildred what we've been talking of. It'll just unsettle her again for nothing.'

The more he tried to undo the impression he had made on me, the less I was able to forget it. It was a small seed of doubt that, sown unawares, was to live and come up after many days. Try as I would in after times I could not root it out. There it was, too shadowy to be met and fought with outright, too real to be disregarded.

I can scarcely tell what feeling prompted me to tell Hildred. It seemed right to do so. But she scarcely took it in.

'Killed or missing, it's about the same,' my father told her, and Hildred's eyes, raised with a look of eagerness, sank again listlessly. 'I suppose it is,' she said sighing.

I said no more then. It was better for her that the wearing suspense should be at an end. And after all, was there any real ground of hope? I believed, though I could not feel, that Cuthbert was dead.

'If only I had seen him, to say good-bye,' Hildred said, 'I think I could bear it better. I wish he were buried in the churchyard, where we could go and see his grave.'

Ah! I wished so too. That silent darkening down of fear had been very dreadful, but the fitful glimmer that was most likely false, but that would gleam out now and again, from among the ashes of our dead hopes, was to my mind more dreadful still.

---

These were the thoughts of many months.

I find that it is not easy to tell one's story. You may mean to tell it all, yet you find that the greater part you have left out altogether.

For so many things go to the making up of a man's life. It is not all sweet nor all bitter. There is in it much brightness, and more shadow, and a great deal besides that is neither cloud nor sunshine, neither bitterness nor sweetness, which fills up the measure of each passing day. One wave does not make a river—rather many; some dance and sparkle, touched by the sunlight from above, while all the time the under-current is flowing sorrowfully on.

And we were busy about many things apart from Cuthbert, were glad and sorry, anxious and hopeful, had plans and thoughts, cares and pleasures, that had nothing to do with him. Still the thought of him lay beneath it all.

It was a busy year for me at Furzy Nook; for as Farmer Foster grew older I had of course more and more on my hands. Time passed wonderfully quick—Sunday after Sunday marking off a week that ended before I had thought of it as much more than begun. We could let the weeks go as they would now, without counting every one as a fresh link in a chain of waiting. There was nothing to wait for, or to hope for any longer. So they all said.

It was better for Hildred that it should be so.

After that dark winter was past, she began to brighten with the spring. She was no longer the merry careless child she used to be. All that was over. But the flower that the rain had beaten down, lifted its head again slowly.

It was not that she had any thought of seeing Cuthbert again. Her last hope died on that Sunday after Christmas Day. No one was of the same mind as I was. Everybody called him 'poor Cuthbert,' and spoke of him as dead—everybody, odd to say, excepting good old Farmer Foster. Directly he heard my doubts he went far beyond me, into a perfect certainty of hopefulness. 'We shall have him home upon us, never fear, before we know where we are,' he used to say; and as I walked beside his pony over the Furzy Nook fields, he told me again and again the same half-forgotten story, the end of which he never could remember, about some prisoners who escaped out of a French prison when he was a lad. I repeated the story, such as it was, to Hildred, but it did not cheer her. I thought she looked rather more grave than usual afterwards. 'Catching at straws still, Willie,' she said, shaking her head.

I suppose it was another straw I caught at later in the summer. One market-day at Morechester, as I stood near the Cross, I heard the ill-omened sounds of fifes and drums, and presently a recruiting party marched down on us from the High Street. It carried me back in a moment to that evening three years ago. I almost seemed to see the purple sky above the village street, and the lights shining through the inn-windows, and then the ribands in Cuthbert's hat, as the loud voice of the recruiting sergeant sounded in my ears.

No wonder that I recalled it so vividly, for as they drew near, I saw that this was the same man who had enlisted Cuthbert. I knew his upright figure and broad good-humoured face directly. The people round were laughing at the very same jokes that I remembered hearing in the street of Wyncliffe.

I made my way up to him in the crowd. He had seen Cuthbert after we had, and might somehow know what had become of him. There were two lads near him staring up in open-mouthed admiration of his scarlet coat and soldierly stride.

He turned away from them to me. 'No, I don't want to enlist,' I said, in answer to the accustomed speech. 'I am come to ask you a question. Do you mind one Cuthbert Franklyn, that you enlisted here three years ago?'

He shook his head with a loud laugh. 'If I'd got to remember half their names, my fine fellow, I'd need to have a good memory. Move on, will you?'

Walking on beside him I managed to tell him hurriedly, what we had heard of Cuthbert. 'Was there a chance of his ever coming back?'

'Why not?' he answered, in his careless, jolly voice. 'I don't know why he shouldn't. We're not all killed, you see, that go for soldiers. Ah! it's a fine life, my lads,'—this to the two boys who were still following him. 'No life like it,' and so on.

Those lightly-spoken words of his, the only ones of encouragement I had ever heard, fell upon me like a blow, and struck me speechless.

'Then you think that he may be living yet,' I asked again, presently.

'You there still!' He looked back good-humouredly. 'Well, there's no knowing. I can't say.'

'He was reported missing.'

'Ah! reported missing, that sounds bad. Still, I've known stranger things come round. Where was he killed, say you?'

'At the battle of Conjeveram, I think they called the place.'

'Conjeveram—seems to me I've heard a talk of prisoners taken there, but the outlandish Indian names are all alike. It's a chance, I tell you. Now, then.'

He had no more time for me. I went home with a beating heart, to tell Hildred. She was sitting in the honeysuckle-shaded porch of Clifford's house, spinning. The bees hummed in the sunshine, the waterfall splashed, Clifford's children were shouting at the river's edge, and Hildred was singing a low murmur of song that blended with the whirr of her wheel and the buzzing of the bees.

'Hildred,' I said, going up to her, 'I have seen Cuthbert's recruiting sergeant, and he thinks he may be alive.'

Hildred started, her hand fell, and the thread broke.

'He does not see why he should not come home some day,' I went on.

She got up, very pale.

'Cuthbert alive!' she said, dreamily. 'Where is he?'

'Oh Hildred, I don't know; I only said he might be living still.'

'Didn't you say he was coming?'

'No, no, it might be just possible.'

Hildred burst out crying.

'What's all this?' said Martha Clifford, coming up with a pail of water on her head. 'What's Hildred crying for?'

'I gave her a fright,' I answered repentantly, and I told Martha what I had heard and said.

'Dear me, Willie, leave the girl alone, do,' said Martha roughly. 'Don't begin all that over again. We had enough of it before we knew he was killed; watching and worrying, worrying and watching, from morning till night. Let bygones be bygones.'

'But I can't forget——'

'Well, others can if you can't. Let the dead rest, Willie Lisle.'

'If we could be quite sure——'

'And so you ought to be. It's all a whimsey you've got into your head. Cuthbert's dead enough, poor lad, but it's my belief you wouldn't be satisfied if you had seen him buried down yonder with your own eyes.'

'Don't, Martha,' said Hildred, brushing away her tears and coming to my side.

'It's enough to vex a saint,' Martha went on, 'let alone me, just when the girl was beginning to leave off fretting, and to take hold a little. I won't have it done, and so I tell you, Willie.'

'I wouldn't harm Hildred,' I said sorrowfully, 'but she and I can't forget; after what grandmother said before she died, and all. You mind that, Martha.'

Martha gave a sort of moan.

'It's only that he's more faithful than any of us,' said Hildred.

'Well, let him be faithful by himself. I won't have him coming upsetting everything, and you breaking your thread, Hildred, and going on like that. I'm ashamed of you.'

Hildred did look so pale for a time after this, that I saw Martha was right in part, and that I ought not to have spoken when there was nothing real to tell. She was rough-spoken, was poor Martha, but she was a just woman. No one ever could have a better neighbour, as we proved that next winter.

It was a hard winter. The snow came early, and lay long; the river, for the first time in many years, was frozen over. I suppose I noticed the cold more for my father's sake. All the autumn he had been ailing, but he would not give in as long as he could keep about. When Christmas came he was lying between life and death in a rheumatic fever.

We never thought he would see another spring, but somehow he struggled through it, and by March he was downstairs again, changed, and aged, and bent, but still a wonder, even to the doctor himself.

Martha Clifford and Hildred nursed him as if they had been daughters of his own, and he was 'ill to nurse,' as the old women say. Martha never got a word of thanks from him for all her goodness, but sometimes he laid his hand kindly on Hildred's head, and smiled at her.

It was pretty to see her trying to cheer him as he sat, hour after hour, with his eyes fixed gloomily on the fire, beating his stick slowly on the floor and saying nothing. It was a hard thing for him to believe, what his stiff aching limbs yet told him too plainly, that he would never be fit for any work again. Hildred did not lose patience, even with his darkest moods. Perhaps she guessed that they were darker still whenever she was away from him.

One wet blowy evening in that same month of March, I chanced to be kept much later than usual at Furzy Nook. Long before I got home it had grown dark, though I made as much haste as I could, thinking that my father's fire would have gone out, and that he would be tired of being by himself.

But when I lifted the latch, the firelight was shining cheerfully through the room, and Hildred sat on the wooden stool at my father's feet. I remember standing still for a moment to watch them. My father's head was bent down, and he was talking to her. Hildred sat looking up at him, her chin on her hand, and the fire lighted both their faces.

It looked so comfortable to see her there—so comfortable and homelike, sitting beside our fire, and keeping my father company. If I had known that I should find her when I came in from the stormy darkness, she, whom once I used to fancy would be always there with us!

My father looked round as I came in, but Hildred's face was turned away from me, and she did not see me. She gave a great start and stood up hurriedly when I touched her shoulder.

'Did I frighten you?' I said; 'you ought to have gone home, Hildred, before it came on to rain like this.'

'Does it rain?' she asked, without looking up.

The wind answered her, as it dashed the rain in a noisy gust against the window.

'You will get wet,' I said, watching her putting on her cloak and hood.

'I don't mind. I only waited because your father was alone, and I didn't like to leave him. I must go home now.'

'Thank you, my dear,' my father said. 'I wish you had not got to go home, but that you could stay here with us always.'

It was my father's way to say things like that to Hildred. They were hard to bear—hard to be reminded of what might have been—hard to listen to, and to say nothing.

I must let her go out now into the rainy darkness. I could never keep her—never—safe sheltered in the warmest corner of our fireside.

As my father spoke, Hildred bent down, still hurriedly, to bid him good night. He kept her hand, and said, 'Hildred, lass, will you come home here, and stay for always? Will you be my daughter?'

I took a step forward and laid my hand on Hildred's arm to draw her back. What was my father saying? He looked up at me and did not let go her hand. 'No one has been so faithful to you as he has. Won't you let him bring you home at last?'

Hildred could scarcely have heard the last words. The door closed behind her almost before they were spoken. I did not try to follow her, though she had gone out alone into the storm. I saw her put her hands over her face as she went out, to hide her tears.

'Father, what have you done?'

He had taken up his pipe and was lighting it slowly. It seemed strange that he should look at me so quietly in my great doubt and pain.

'No harm, lad, no harm. I should be glad to see you comfortable with her before I die.'

'Comfortable! With Hildred!'

'Ay, with my little Hildred. She's a good girl, and she'd make a good wife. Besides, I've always said as how it's lonesome without a woman about the house.'

I tried to speak quietly. 'Were you talking about me when I came home?'

The pipe was alight now. He never could be got to talk when he was smoking. He just answered 'Yes,' and no more.

'You didn't tell her all I once told you?'

'Why not? I've a mind to bring you and her together.'

'Father,' I said, 'you have forgotten Cuthbert and my promise.'

He made no reply for a few minutes, and then, as, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, he said, 'Cuthbert's dead.'

I leant my head down upon my arm, without the heart to-night to go over the old ground.

'Well!' said my father at last, when the pipe was out and the fire had almost smouldered away.

I shook my head. 'Cuthbert trusted me, and after all he may be living yet.'

'Not he.' He took his stick, and as he got up slowly from his arm-chair to go to bed, he added, 'You should think a bit of Hildred, too, Willie.'

'Of Hildred!'

'She gave Cuthbert up for dead long ago, and she sees you mostly every day.'

With that he went upstairs, leaning on my shoulder, and would not say another word except 'Good night.'

Good night! as if I could sleep with all this in my mind. Then Hildred knew now how I loved her, not as Cuthbert's brother, not as her old playfellow, but with a love as strong, as deep, longer far than his had been.

And she? Until now, whenever I believed, as sometimes I did, that Cuthbert was dead, my only thought had been that at some time in the years to come, when we knew all for certain, I might comfort her—that she might get to care for me, not as she had cared for her first love, but gradually a little, because I loved her so much, and so that she might grow at last to be content.

And now to be told, as my father had told me to-night, that I ought to think of Hildred's happiness. Was it possible that her happiness could depend the least on me? Could it be that her hope of seeing Cuthbert again was gone, and that her love had faded with her hope? She was so young—scarcely eighteen—when he left her. Her gentle nature was not made to stand alone. It might be that in its loneliness her heart had turned, without her knowing it, to the guardian who strove so hard to hide his love for her.

The rain was still pattering against the window, and the wind blew in gusts through the ruins, but I took no heed of the storm. I was happy. I think that hour, sitting alone in the chimney-corner, while the last sparks were dying out of the peat fire, was the happiest of all my life. For I only thought of Hildred, of how perhaps some day she would come and turn all my life into brightness. I had never dreamed, since Cuthbert went away, that she could ever care for me, and now what a dream it was! I remember it because it never came to me again, because I woke suddenly and the dream was gone. I do not know where it took me, or how long it lasted, but in it Hildred was my own. We were together. Then suddenly it seemed as if Cuthbert stood before me, and I could not meet his eyes, full of a grave reproach as he looked from me to Hildred.

My promise! I got up and paced the room with rapid steps—that cruel promise. Was I never to be free from it? All my life was it to drag me back from happiness and bind me fast in misery? If it was broken, what worse could come of it than this? It would not haunt me any longer then. No one would reproach me—no one would suffer by it. At all events I must take my chance of that. A broken promise! Why, it was not fit to weigh for a moment against the happiness of two whole lives. I should forget it, I must, surely in a little while; if not, who cared?

A whole storm of dark thoughts came sweeping over me; thoughts that I cannot recall even now without a shudder—anger against Cuthbert—bitter rebellion against my fate—a mocking contempt for myself that I had kept the promise sacred hitherto. What promise ever held true? I thought. Master Caleb's old puzzle came back to me,—how the cup of water that was given in Christ's name was in no wise to lose its reward; yet it had caused my mother's death, and following step by step, from that one act came all my troubles. That had proved false then, like all the rest, false as I was myself. Did it prove false? The very saying of the holy Name—the sacred words—the remembrance of my mother's trustful face—of Dorothy's quietly-spoken confidence—all this calmed me, and in the black darkness I fell suddenly on my knees, and said—

'Oh, Mother's God, who wert to her a sure refuge, come now and help me!'

As I prayed, a strange feeling came upon me that my prayer rose up even into the presence of a merciful listening God. The storm did not cease, the trouble was not rolled away, but there came a little rift into the dark clouds over me, a little speck of light shone through the blackness, as if a voice said, 'Oh, thou poor soul, be comforted; I will help thee!'

I think that was my first real prayer.

The next day was Sunday. The storm had quite passed over before the sun rose, and the grass sparkled with silver rain-drops. The river swept past beneath, with a fuller flow; the robins made the air bright with their merriment, rejoicing that, as they hopped from twig to twig, they shook down showers of lazy brilliant drops from off the boughs.

It seemed strange that such a storm could pass, and leave no deeper traces behind.

Over my life, too, a storm had come last night, but it was followed by no sunny morning. I was quieter, however, for my mind was made up. Weary with much thinking I put off until the afternoon that which I felt I ought to say to Hildred.

She, and Clifford's two boys, Robin and Walter, walked home together after church, and little Jock and Phillis were with me. As we passed under the yew tree, I asked Hildred to stay with me for a few minutes. The children went on, and Hildred and I were both silent, listening to their merry voices as they died away. I did not know what to say first.—At last I asked her abruptly, if she remembered how Cuthbert bade her good-bye here.

She said yes, she remembered it quite well.

I took her hand and said—I know my voice was trembling—'You have not forgotten him!'

'Oh no,' she answered; 'poor Cuthbert!'

'Sister!'—I had never called her by that name before—'when he went away he left you to me to take care of, and he asked me to talk about him to you, that you never might forget him. We have not spoken of him lately as often as we used, but it has not made any difference. If he were to come back he would find us just the same.'

She was silent.

'Eh, Hildred?'

'I shall always remember him,' she said in a low voice.

'And watch for his coming back?'

'Oh Willie, poor Cuthbert is dead.'

'Don't say that, Hildred—don't think it. I know that every one here believes it, but I don't. Some day we shall see him again.'

She sat down on the bank, with her hands, which she had clasped together, lying listlessly in her lap. I saw she did not share in my belief, and when I repeated 'He will come back to you,' she only shook her head.

'But at least'—I asked the question almost in a whisper—'at least you love him the same as ever?'

'It all seems so long ago,' she said, simply.

I turned away, angry with myself that the words gave me such a thrill of pleasure—almost angry with her for making me unfaithful. We were both false to him, for I had let her forget him.

'Oh Hildred,' I said, not speaking as I felt, 'and he loved you so dearly.'

My voice must have been very reproachful, though in truth the reproach was against myself, not against her, poor child. The tears came into her eyes, but she only repeated what she had said before: 'It does seem so very long ago.'

I did not know how to go on. For a time neither of us spoke. At last she said, 'Is it very wrong of me?'

'Wrong, Hildred! no,' I answered sadly. 'You were so young when he left you, that I suppose it was too hard for you to remember. Only, how could we meet him if he came back?'

She looked frightened. 'You don't really think he will.'

'God only can tell that—we must do everything as if we expected him. I know that if he were here it would be all right; you would only need to see him again. But Hildred'—I had come now to the most difficult thing I had to say,—'Hildred, my father told you, last night, something about me, that I never meant you to hear. It must be, for both of us, as if it had never been told.'

'Is it true?' she asked, without looking up.

'Yes.'

After a little while I said, 'Don't let it come between us. Let me be your brother still, and Cuthbert's.'

Hildred tried to say, 'Thank you.' Her tears were falling down slowly upon the clasped hands in her lap.

'Don't cry, dear, don't be sorry.'

'You have been so good to me,' she whispered.

They were very simple words. I don't quite know how it was, that I knew from them that she had grown to love me. I bent down, pressing my hands tightly together to force back the rising words.

Hildred that saw it was hard for me. She touched my arm with her hand, saying softly, 'Never mind me, Willie; I will try to be very good.' But her voice failed again, and she drew a long sobbing sigh. 'Oh, I am so tired—so tired of being unhappy.'

Harder still then—too hard. She was not made to bear trouble, but to be loved and taken care of. She scarcely seemed to understand now, why I could not comfort her as I always had hitherto.

The longing to take her home and try to make her happy, was stronger than I could bear. I could not be faithful to Cuthbert any longer. He was dead—again and again some voice whispered it in my ear. I believed it at last. He was dead, and he would never know. My first duty was to Hildred, for surely time and death had released me from my promise, and I knew now that she cared for me more than she had ever cared for him.

I knelt down beside her. I began to speak. What saved me? I scarcely know. Suddenly, far off in the evening stillness, some one began to whistle. My thoughts flew back to Cuthbert.

I went away from Hildred and leant over the wall, with my head resting on my arms. It was last night's battle over again, but harder, inasmuch as I knew Hildred's feeling now. I felt that upon my doing right depended more than the happiness of her life and of my own. I have heard that men have two angels, an evil and a good, who follow them through life. It seemed to me that they were both beside me then. But the good angel's shining eyes were growing sorrowful and dim, and the other (oh, why did it take a shape like Hildred's to tempt me) put out a hand to draw me nearer. Almost in despair I tried to pray. Those words—earliest learnt, and most familiar in all the world—the blessed words of Our Lord's Prayer, with its petition to be delivered from evil and temptation, came to my lips, and I repeated them.

Just then—it seems but a small thing—the whistle sounded again nearer at hand. Loud and clear came to my ears, Cuthbert's favourite old tune 'Over the hills and far away.' In a second it brought him before me, not as the distant soldier we had thought of as dead—not as Hildred's lover—but as my own boy-brother, the dear old Cuthbert of our happy days. All my love for him rushed back. I thought how unfaithful I had been to him, and my tears fell like rain down on the old wall.

So help had come. A second time God's mercy won the battle for me, even against myself.

After a time I went back to Hildred and took her hand. I cannot tell you what I said to her, but I wondered at myself for being able to speak so quietly. I told her how I had loved her all her life—not many words about that, for I had found that I could not trust myself, but I reminded her of the trust we held together, and that Cuthbert had left his heart fearlessly in her hands and mine. And I said, 'We must not fail him. To be true and faithful will be better for you, and happier too, dear, in the end.'

Hildred took her hand from mine, but she did not speak. Only, when I had said all I could, she whispered, 'Good-bye, Willie,' and turned to go away.

'Hildred, you understand me,' I could not help saying. She looked back, trying hard to smile, but her lips quivered sadly. She said, 'I am sure you know best, Willie.'

And then she left me.

---

In the years that I have led a wandering life, it has been my fate to hear many stories told. From wayfaring men, whose path has led them for a time to journey with me—from travelled folk—from old people, to whom (as after this you will know well) the memory of their youth and the sound of their own voices is ever dear—from young ones full of themselves and of the world, that is still new to them—from all these I have heard many a tale.

In the summer twilight, when the stars are brightening—on lonesome roads where there is little to speak of or to look for, except the mile-stones—in crowded towns, I have listened to story after story. Oftenest of all, beside some friendly fireside, on a winter's night such as this is. The best stories come out then, the longest and the strangest, sometimes the saddest. I have been reckoned a good listener in my day. It is not easy to be weary, hearing of human hopes and fears, of human hearts and troubles.

But what I wanted to say just now is this: I have seen that the best story-tellers, those that get the most rapt listeners, put a great deal of change into what they tell. They are fond of passing suddenly from one thing to another, a sad bit, then a bright bit—a sunny day and then a stormy night. They make you cry one minute, and the next you are laughing with them. And so they go on, black and white, light and shade, for ever. I hope you will forgive me that I do not know how to do this. It must be the right thing in a story, since it succeeds so well, but I cannot see that it is thus in nature. The sunshine and the shadow do not fall by rule, one following the other. They come and go at will. Sometimes a whole day's journey lies under an overcast sky, at others scarcely a cloud comes across the sun from its rising to its setting.

I would weave my story willingly after this chequered pattern if I could, but it is told in sober earnest, and I must just go on in my own fashion to the end, which is not so far off now.

My father did not know what to make of it when nothing came of what he had said to Hildred, and all went on seemingly much as usual.

According to his custom he asked no questions, only gave sundry vexed impatient looks at the door, and at Martha Clifford, when for several days she came in alone to wait on him. On her part she went about with pursed-up lips and a heavy step, setting things to rights with a sort of fling, meant to show that in some way she felt herself to be ill-used.

'Ah,' she began at last, seeing as she came in, that my father's eyes, as usual, looked beyond her in the hope of seeing Hildred following, 'I see well enough what you are after, neighbour Lisle. But I don't mean to put up with it any longer, that I don't.'

'What'll she be at now?' asked my father, looking up at me.

'Willie knows right well. I told him how it would be if he went on about Cuthbert Franklyn any longer, talking to Hildred and scaring her. There's the girl been crying all night: Phillis heard her. But there'll be an end to it all, for I am going to send her away to her aunt in Morechester. She'll be left in peace there, at all events.'

Martha kept her word. Prayers and promises availed nothing. She sent Hildred to Morechester, to be shut up all through the bright summer in a hot town, in rooms above a shop. Her aunt, a good woman enough I believe, lived in one of those quaint old houses in the market-place, that had a carved wooden gallery running round it, and a high-pitched roof with a gilt weathercock at the top.

They told me Hildred was content to be there. On market days I used to see her standing in the old-fashioned bow-window, watching the busy scene round the Cross—watching perhaps, I thought, for me. It was the moment in each week I lived for. They would not let me go and see her.

She always had a bright colour, and a smile when I caught sight of her, but even from that distance I could see that she was growing thin.

They left her there for many months, poor child, till long after the summer days were gone. Late in autumn Matt Clifford's heart smote him at her wistful face, as he was bidding her good-bye one day, and he brought her home.

Martha talked and scolded, blamed Hildred for looking ill, Matt for giving in to her when it was not for her real good, and me, for meaning, as of course I did, to begin again doing all I could towards wearing Hildred into her grave.

Clifford—I had never liked him so well—came and spoke to me himself, in a manly, straightforward way, and with a fairness that gave double weight to all his words. Hildred had no one but him and his wife, belonging to her, he said. He stood in her father's place, and wished to do his duty by her the same as if she was one of his own children. If he spoke now it was because he thought that it was right he should, not because he cared to meddle and make; 'as you know well enough, Will,' he added with a half smile, 'seeing how many years I have let things be and have said nothing either way.' 'He was sure,' he went on, 'that I had meant to do rightly by Hildred and Cuthbert both. As far as he could see, I could have done nothing but wait to see if Cuthbert would come home. When a man gave his word, why, he must stick to it. But there was an end to everything: the living ought not to suffer for the dead. To his mind it was time now to think a little more of Hildred. 'For betwixt you both,' said Clifford, looking up again with his grave smile, 'she is getting wasted to a shadow. What with Cuthbert's going away, and never sending a word home, and with your not letting her believe—as they tell me—that Cuthbert is dead and gone, what with all this, there'll be naught left of her soon. I tell you where it is, Will: I want to have her forget; if he's dead, fretting won't bring him back; if so be as he's alive, you'll never make me think he couldn't have sent so much as a line home to his sweetheart in these many years. I don't want to think so badly of him,' said Clifford 'as that he's living still.'

'Did you never think he might have been made prisoner?' I asked.

'I never think anything, but that he was killed, as David Moore told us. Hearing that, you are set free concerning any word you passed to him. That being so, I ask you now what you are going to do.'

I was silent.

'I should have no call to speak,' Clifford went on frankly, 'no call whatsoever, if Hildred had not been told by your father that you had been partial to her yourself, as long ago as before Cuthbert went. Maybe it was no business of his to tell—that I must leave—but as she knows it, for my wife had it from your father himself (Hildred never spoke a word), how can we look for her to settle down, seeing you every day?'

'What is it you would have me do?' I asked.

'I don't want you to marry the girl, mind,' said her brother, with a sort of pride for her in his voice. 'I don't want her to marry anybody, God bless her, unless she likes. As long as I am spared she has a home with me, and welcome. But I should wish to say to her—if so it is to be—that she needn't think any more of either you or him. She's but young yet, and my hope is that she'll turn her mind to some one else, after a bit. Still, I seem to feel vexed for you, Will. You are very fond of her, and I think, though she doesn't say a word, that she's very fond of you. It seems as though it were a pity to waste your two lives just for what I call an idea.'

'Will you give me a little time to think it over?' I asked, more perplexed than I had ever been before.

'To be sure,' he said heartily. 'I don't require you to do aught in haste. But consider that here's Christmas a-coming round again, and it'll be two years come Christmas Day since we heard for certain that Cuthbert was dead. It don't seem likely,' and Matt grew quite warm, 'it don't seem natural that he'd never have sent home a line—being in life—just to say "Don't mourn along o' me, dear friends, for I'm above ground yet." That's how I look at it.'

It is no good telling you all I thought. There has been too much about my thoughts already. I had striven so long to keep the balance even; it needed but a feather-weight to make it tremble now. Clifford's reasoning—Hildred's forced smiles—the thought that it was possible, after all that had come and gone, that she could ever turn her mind to some one else, some happy man who would be free to woo her, and would win her heart at last—these were not feather-weights. The length of time did make some difference too. Cuthbert himself would surely say that I had waited long enough honestly to fulfil his trust. I pondered over my answer to Matt's question for a whole month. At the end the balance was not even any longer.

There was one chance left of my getting good advice, for Master Caleb Morton was coming to spend the Christmas holidays at Furzy Nook. All my hopes were fixed on asking his counsel. We had not met since the beginning of all my troubles, more than four years ago.

Well, he came, and what was more, his wife and Mrs. Janet came with him. Such a welcome as they got from all Wyncliffe! It was a long while before I could get a quiet time to tell my story.

'There are no two ways about it,' said Mrs. Janet. She was the first to break a long silence, after all was told. She stood, knitting-needles in hand, working vigorously while she talked. 'There are no two ways about it. It is Willie's duty to marry Hildred Clifford. The thing is beyond a doubt. Young Franklyn, we are positively told, is long since dead. Therefore Willie is at liberty, and I say, bound, to marry the girl he loves, and who loves him. That's clear enough.'

'You think so, Janet?' said her brother thoughtfully.

'To be sure I do. The thing is as plain as a pike-staff.'

'I wish I could be as sure of it as you are.'

'Why, it's common sense. Willie will see it himself, and make up his mind, now that it is put before him properly—that is, if he is as sensible as he ought to be after the learning he got from you.'

'But I haven't made up my own mind,' said my dear old master.

'Brother, I am surprised at you. What would you have? You can't keep faith with a dead man, and I'm sure he wouldn't wish it himself. Cuthbert Franklyn was an open-hearted generous lad, when I remember him, and would have been the last to stand in the way of Willie's welfare. No, Willie's present duty is to make little Hildred Clifford happy, not to keep a fanciful promise that had much better never have been made at all.'

'I protest I think Janet is right,' said Master Caleb. 'I do indeed. The more I think of it the more sensible it seems.'

They went on strengthening each other in the opinion they had formed, while I listened with a beating heart, hearing Mrs. Janet assert, and my master agree with her, that it was my bounden duty to set aside the past. The turning of the tide had come at length.

I looked towards Dorothy, sitting somewhat apart beside the fire. She had not spoken, but once or twice had raised her eyes quickly from her work. Latterly she had laid it down on her lap, as if to listen more carefully, and was looking thoughtfully from one to the other as they spoke. Master Caleb followed the direction of my eyes.

'Do you want to know what she thinks?' he said, brightening up.

'If she would be so kind.'

'Dorothy,' he called. She came nearer and laid her hand on his shoulder. 'Willie wants your advice, and your help Dorothy.'

She hesitated a little, and looked at Mrs. Janet, who nodded to her, and said—

'Well, speak up child!'

'But Janet must know so much better than I do,' Dorothy began.

'Bless me!' Mrs. Janet broke in. 'Why, you are not going to say Dorothy, child, that you don't think of it as I do.'

'I thought,' Dorothy began again, and then stopped.

'There can be no two ways about it,' said Mrs. Janet, knitting faster.

'Go on, Dorothy,' said her husband watching her.

'I don't like seeming to set myself up against Janet,' she said, with her frank smile.

'Is that all?' Mrs. Janet patted her shoulder. 'Always know your mind, my dear, and speak it. I am going into the window to turn the heel of my stocking, and I shan't hear you. So say your say, child, and don't think of me—not that there can be two ways about it, all the same, you know.'

Dorothy turned round to me quickly. 'You want to know what I think?'

I said if she pleased I did indeed.

'Then, Willie, remember Cuthbert's trust in you, remember your promise, and help Hildred to keep hers.'

There was a short silence.

'You know there is every reason to believe Cuthbert Franklyn to be dead,' said Master Caleb, in a low voice.

'I know it; we cannot tell. It may be so—God alone knows. That question is in His hands not ours. But is Willie set free from the solemn word he gave? Can he marry Hildred now, and yet feel that he is faithful to the trust he took upon him, and true to the friend who left all he cared for, without a fear, in his keeping? Willie,' she went on, 'it is very hard for you, a long hard trial and a rough path may lie before you. It may be also that in this world you will never see that you were right. Perhaps at the close of your life you will say, "Well, all these years I might have been happy, and only for a doubt I have been lonely all my life." But I think even then you will not grudge the long struggle or the lonely years, and that you will draw near to your end more peacefully, for having tried to do your duty to the uttermost and to be "faithful unto death."'

I bent my head down lower and lower as she spoke. I was ashamed to raise it up. Her words had swept away the mists that had seemed to be rising round me and confusing me. The right was growing clear once more. The bright haze that had dazzled my weak eyes was passing away, and my duty stood stern and plain again before me.

I could not speak, but stood before her with my eyes bent on the ground.

'It was for Hildred's sake he doubted,' said my kind master, almost pleadingly.

'I know it,' she answered very softly. 'I know it was; but Hildred will be glad too, some day, that Willie has guarded her even against herself. He must find strength for her also. It seems to me that there could be for them no true content or rest, for the shadow of a trust betrayed and of a broken word would stand between them, and day by day the cloud of a fear they would not dare to speak of would darken over their lives.'

There was silence all through the room. No one answered. My master still sat half-turned and looking up at her. Mrs. Janet had left the window and was facing us. Her hands were held in the attitude of knitting, but the needles did not move, nor did she try to speak. I saw them all without knowing that I looked. At last Mistress Dorothy spoke again.

'Willie,' she said—the colour had flushed into her face, and its earnestness made her beautiful to look at—'Willie, not to every one is granted the opportunity of a great self-sacrifice. If God has willed that your path should be very difficult, do not be afraid to walk in it, for He will surely help you. Do not think so much of what you may do, as of what you can do—of what you can give up at His call. Choose the highest, for it will lead you nearer to Him. I am a weak woman. I know I should not be strong enough to walk in your hard path; but Willie'—she came near to me and took my hand,—'hitherto you have been so noble and so true. Brave heart, be faithful to the end.'

The kind words, so unlooked for, so undeserved, came too suddenly upon me. I had so nearly failed, and she said this. I kissed her hand—

When I looked up again, the tears were raining down her face, Master Caleb's eyes were shaded by his hand, and Mrs. Janet was in the window, standing with her back to us.

---

They say that to every cloud there is a silver lining. I was very sure that there were clouds on my horizon, but not quite so certain about the silver lining. If there was one at all, it must have been Jock Clifford.

For when you are in trouble there is a great deal of comfort to be got out of a child's affection.

In those days, after Matt Clifford had received my answer to his question in cold silence—when Martha would not let Hildred go near our house, and had forbidden her, as nearly as she could, to speak to me—when my father never opened his lips but to complain of me, I fell back with a singular feeling of refreshment and consolation, on my one staunch friend Jock.

He had been my shadow ever since, some nine or ten years ago, he began to stand alone on his sturdy little legs. Robin and Walter, his twin elder brothers, had no time to notice him. They were absorbed in a never-ending struggle, which of them should have the upper hand—a struggle that had begun as long ago as when, two red-faced babies, they lay heads and tails in the same cradle. It never seemed likely to be settled in their life-time, and it made them very quarrelsome, and quite inseparable.

So Jock, left to himself, bestowed all his company upon me. When one is in disgrace with well nigh all the world—and very few people made up 'all the world' to me,—it is at all events something to have a friend left, in whose eyes the idea of your doing anything wrong is a matter of simple impossibility—it is something, even though the friend be only eleven years old.

Jock was no half-hearted champion. He had found that he could make his mother pinch up her lips and raise her eyebrows, merely by praising me. So he talked of me incessantly, partly for love of me, and partly to use this his newly-gotten power. He was somewhat pleased too, only half offended, at Aunt Hildred frequently giving him kisses and lumps of barley sugar, behind the door.

Knowing that I was not very welcome to any one else, I fell, in my down-heartedness, rather an easy prey to Jock's overflowing life and glee, and he led me hither and thither, that spring, pretty nearly as he would. Neither work nor play came amiss to him. Ratting, rook-shooting and rabbit-snaring Jock's soul delighted in—most of all, perhaps, helping me to fish the trout stream that ran under the Castle walls.

No wonder he liked it. My own troubles seemed to fade away, as I laid the line lightly across the stream. Ah, those spring days, when the 'March brown' was on the water, how fair they were! A bluff wind came singing up the valley, crisping the clear brown water and crowning each little wave with silver ripples; a soft pearly sky, with now and then a dash of pale spring sunshine that lighted up woods and stream, and showed how the red buds were bursting into leaf, and a tender shining green, was beginning to clothe the alder trees.

My eyes, and Jock's, were fastened on to the water. I felt, rather than saw, that spring's soft fingers were at work along the banks; that a tuft of starry primroses had been nestled into the mossy root of an old willow, and a yellow butterfly, the first of the year, hung fluttering over them. Farther on a whole bed of violets, purple and white, glittered, fragrance-breathing, on the bank. The wind swept through the boughs merrily, trying in play to tear off the new leaves; but the stout little things held fast and laughed back, as they were swayed up and down. The whole bright summer was theirs to flutter through, before the wind could claim them as his own; and the birds and the wind and the sunshine spoke with their hundred tongues, and said, 'Ah, poor mortals! you may fret, and dispute, and sorrow as you will; you cannot keep back the summer. It is coming. It is coming.'

One day that spring I was bidden to a wedding at the Ferry-house; and I went, rejoicing heartily for both bride and bridegroom's sake. If ever I saw a face that beamed with contentment it was the bridegroom's.

Patience—his best helper—had won the day for him, and Elfrida wedded her faithful suitor at last.

For David Moore had come home for good, cured of his love of wandering and fighting, and well pleased to settle down for the rest of his days at the ferry.

The old people Elfrida had worked for so long wanted her no more. Davy—well, if it be true that clouds have silver linings it is not less so that each rose has its thorn. I thought of that on the wedding day, when the moment came for Elfrida to part with Davy. She was as quiet as usual until then, waiting upon everybody, and looking as if nothing had happened. But when the horse with the pillion on it, stood ready to carry her 'home,' Elfrida's heart gave way. She knelt on the ground, hugging Davy to her, kissing his curls, his frock, his little restless hands. Her husband stood waiting for her, compassionate and a little impatient. Davy himself had one arm round her neck, but his eyes were wandering to the horse, and he was eager to see Elfrida ride away. 'Oh Baby,' she sobbed, going back in her distress to the first name she had loved him by; 'Won't Baby kiss poor Frida?'

Davy looked at her, wondering. He had never seen her cry before. He put the other arm round her neck and kissed her gravely on each cheek. Immediately afterwards he gave her up as a bad job, being quite unable to fathom such a depth of grief as two kisses from him were not sufficient to cure.

That would be the way with him all his days. He was made, in his careless beauty, to win hearts without trying, to be loved and worshipped and wept over. There would always be plenty of Elfridas thankful to work for him in the shadow, while he walked through life in the sunshine.

But now her willing slavery was ending. The last words were spoken. The old shoe was thrown after her for luck. The setting sun was turning the river—her old comrade—into a sheet of gold.

Elfrida rode away up into the hills behind her goodman, and the ferry-boat knew her no more.

'Life,' said Martha Clifford musingly, 'is a muddle. Births and deaths—comings and goings—weddings and funerals—the young marry and the old die; that's the way of the world.'

She was standing by my father's bedside as she reflected thus. Elfrida's was the wedding that was just past; my father's the death that it seemed would follow hard upon it.

He had been failing all the winter; but now we counted his remaining life by days, nay, it might be, by hours. Martha had softened towards me since he was 'taken,' as she called it, 'for death.' Both she and Hildred helped to tend him.

And it came about that, before my father died, even the cause of difference that had been between us was taken away.

It was but natural that they should blame me for still clinging to such a mere shadow as the hope that Cuthbert might be alive. But I thought that it must be God Himself who kept alight in my heart the little spark of faith that no one shared, and that would not be extinguished. Now I know that it was so.

For I was right after all. At last—at last, he came. One evening, after Martha and Hildred had gone home and I was alone downstairs, I heard the latch move as if some one was trying to lift it with an unsteady hand. Then the door opened, and the sunshine and the shadow fell across the floor—a man's shadow. I looked round carelessly, for I was not thinking of him then. Other cares—my father's illness and Hildred's presence, had driven him lately out of my mind. He had not been so far from my thoughts for years as lately, when day by day he was coming nearer to me.

Now, as I was telling you, I saw a shadow cast from the doorway. I turned round. There, on the threshold stood a soldier in a worn greatcoat—a dark man, with the empty sleeve of his right arm fastened across his breast. As I got up, he took off his hat and spoke my name.

How did we meet? I cannot tell. What words does one use after such a parting? How can you greet one, come back, as it were, through the grave and gate of death? I only remember hearing myself say over and over again, 'Cuthbert, Cuthbert.'

'You thought that I was dead.' His voice deep and grave, was as the voice of a stranger.

'Never; I could not believe it; others might, I never did.'

'Faithful old Willie.' He smiled, and then it was Cuthbert again.

I wanted to push him down into the arm-chair in the chimney-corner, and tried to welcome him in such broken words as I could find.

Was it very strange that, in the quick rush of joy at seeing his face once more, I forgot Hildred for a moment—forgot all but that my brother had come home? His next words brought all back. He put his hand on my shoulder and said 'Hildred?' and I felt his grasp tighten as if he tried to steady himself.

'She is at home, and well.'

He drew a long breath without speaking, and my words too were checked.

'I am going to her,' he said next.

'Oh Cuthbert, stop—remember. She knows nothing, she has long given you up. It will kill her if you come upon her suddenly.'

Cuthbert pushed away my hand with a smile. 'Joy does not kill,' he said.

Joy! I do not know which I thought of at that moment, joy or sorrow, Cuthbert or Hildred, the sudden shock of their meeting to her, or the blow it might bring to him.

'Let me go to her first,' I said eagerly: 'let me tell her.' I do not know what I meant to do. I think I had some wild idea of imploring her to love him.

Cuthbert looked surprised. 'No, no,' he said, 'I want to see her first glad look. Don't keep me.'

I suppose in my perturbation I was going to follow him, for he stopped and said, 'Let me go alone, Will. Dear old fellow, I don't want even you when I first see my Hildred.'

I let him go—let him go to her whom he called his own. He was right—his, not mine. And I had been so madly glad to see him!

Cuthbert was not gone for very long. He came in slowly, came up to me, and—he had not done it since we were little boys together—bent down and kissed me. My heart was beating hard and fast.

'You have seen her?'

'Yes'—he sank down wearily into a chair—'I have seen her.'

'Well?'

'Well'—he looked up and smiled rather sadly—'Well, the joy did not kill her, you see.'

'She was glad?'

'I hope so. I hope so indeed.'

'What then, Cuthbert? Did she know you?'

He leant down his head on the table, and suddenly burst into tears. My whole heart went back to him.

'Cuthbert—what is it?'

He spoke almost directly. 'I am a worn-out old soldier. I have lost my arm. I am good for nothing now, and I think she was disappointed in me.'

Oh Cuthbert, whom in my heart I had almost hated just now—true soldier, faithful heart—to see his brave head bent low. He should be happy whatever became of me.

I told him to be comforted, that all would be well, and by-and-by he began to believe what he so much wished. 'I have looked forward to this for so long,' he said. 'I have had so much hardship and suffering. For two years we were in an Indian prison, and I should not have cared to live, only for the thought that Hildred would grieve for me. And now to see her so changed, so white and strange.'

'You frightened her, poor child. Remember that she had long given up the hope of seeing you again.'

'You had not.'

'Ah, Cuthbert, that was so different.'

He gave a long sigh. 'Perhaps I had better not have come back at all. I had better not have lived.'

'But you must live now, for your little Hildred's sake.' I could say it with no sharp pang at my heart. A great peacefulness came over me, like the evening air after a storm. That night, as I sat up alone beside my father's bed, I prayed for Cuthbert and Hildred. For myself I only needed to thank God for His mercy to me.

It was scarcely light the next morning when Jock's low whistle under the window called me out to him. Hildred had sent him, he said, to tell me to go and speak to her. She was in the chapel, waiting for me.

Day had not long broken outside. Inside the ruined aisle of the chapel was full of shadows still, but through the great window facing the east we could see the dawn brighten and grow strong. Hildred had chosen a strange place of meeting. Here all told how earthly joy and earthly sorrow vanish and pass away. Beneath our feet, as we trod the broken pavement, were the graves of men whose hopes and fears had long been over; their very names were worn away by the footsteps of later generations. Deep and unbroken seemed the repose of the happy dead. What matter now to them how heavy the cross had been, so that they had won the crown? What matter how hard and long the battle had been once, so that they had been faithful unto death? A thrill of awe crossed me as I looked up the solemn aisle in the grey morning light. There too the sculptured angel that in my childhood I used to call my mother, looked down gravely with outstretched wings, as if she were watching over her son in this the crisis of his life.

Hildred was there, leaning against an old carved tomb. She was quite white, and her eyes had a scared and weary look as she raised them to me.

I am afraid that I spoke the more sternly, for the love I felt for her, the great longing I had to take her to my heart and comfort her.

'Well, Hildred,' I said, gravely, 'you sent for me.'

'I was so frightened,' she whispered. 'Oh Willie, tell me what I ought to do.'

'Your duty.'

Just as she used to do when she was a child, she covered her face and shrank down on to the ground.

'But it is so hard to do one's duty—so hard.'

'Oh child,' I answered, from my heart, 'it is hard, but God is good.'

Then I tried to plead Cuthbert's cause, and to tell her how the remembrance of her had been the one thing he clung to through his dark days of imprisonment and pain—the one thing, failing which he would have been glad, for very weariness, to lie down and die.

'If we have failed him—you and I—in these years that he has trusted us—and in my heart I know that I have failed in deed, if not in will—oh Hildred, it is not too late yet. We have time, and Cuthbert trusts us still.'

'You never think of anyone but Cuthbert,' said Hildred, impatiently, unknowing how cruel her words sounded.

'I think of you too, Hildred,' I answered, very sadly. 'I am very sorry for you both.'

'Would Cuthbert mind so very much,' asked Hildred, 'if he knew how long it was before we gave him up?'

'You will never tell him you forgot him,' I said, in terror.

She was silent.

'God help him, then. God help us all.'

Neither of us spoke for many minutes—slow minutes that were laden with heavy thoughts.

At last Hildred looked up to me with a smile that was wonderfully sweet and sad.

'Willie,' she said, 'I wish I could be as strong as you are.'

'You can, Hildred. Oh dear Hildred, you will be if you try.'

'Oh, I am going to try, of course,' she answered, wearily.

Cuthbert was standing before the door when I went home. We shook hands and went into the house together, but I had a strange feeling all the time, that I did not know what to say to him. Last night I fancied that my battle was all over, and the victory mine once and for ever. This morning it all began over again, and every word that Cuthbert spoke ruffled me. I felt angry with him for speaking cheerily, and gave all my attention to lighting the fire. He stood leaning his arm on the chimney-piece, and watching me.

'It seems odd to see you doing all the woman's work,' he said.

I answered shortly that there was no one else to do it.

'So dear old Granny is gone?'

'Yes, long ago.'

'How long?'

'Oh, two years and more.'

'Dear, kind old Granny. She was very good to me.'

I said nothing.

'Do you think your father is getting better?' he asked presently.

'No, I don't. He never will be better.'

Cuthbert looked down at me in his old kind way.

'Poor old Will, you have had troubles even here at home.'

'Yes, one doesn't need to go to the wars for that,' I answered.

'And yet I fancied you all so happy here, except that I thought Hildred must fret about me at times. Did she, Will?'

'Of course. Everybody was uneasy about you.'

And then I was glad to get away to my father's room. But when I came down Cuthbert would talk of Hildred, and ask questions about her. He seemed to have forgotten the fears he had last night. She had been startled, he said, but it would be all right to-day. And by-and-by he went away to seek her.

The day passed slowly and heavily. My father lay with his eyes half closed, scarcely noticing anything. I did not let Cuthbert see him, for fear of disturbing him, but later in the day, when Hildred and Martha were with him, he heard the strange footstep on the stairs. Cuthbert's step now, soldierly and measured, was very unlike the light quick tread my father used to know. It was no remembrance that made him turn his head on the pillow to listen, and then say to Hildred, 'Who?'

I tried to turn his attention away, but the footstep crossed the room below, and my father repeated, 'Who is it?'

'Cuthbert Franklyn,' Hildred said, quietly.

'Cuthbert!' There was very little surprise in his voice as he repeated the name. 'Cuthbert! Bring him here.'

I went outside the room and called him. I was sorry my father should find out that Cuthbert was there, but I saw in a few minutes that it mattered very little. The small interests of Time, its lights and shadows, were growing faint and dim for the eyes on which Eternity was just about to dawn.

My father held out his hand feebly when Cuthbert stood beside his bed. After a minute he looked up at him again, and murmured a few words, too low for any of us to catch distinctly. I believe they were something about fishing, and that his thoughts were wandering back to when Cuthbert was a boy. He did not need an answer. In a few minutes he was lying quietly as before.

Cuthbert stood for a while at the foot of the bed and then went away.

It made me feel more than ever that I was alone. My father had cared so much about my marrying Hildred; and now Cuthbert's return, which put an end to that thought for ever, awoke no interest in him. He was neither surprised nor sorry that Cuthbert and Hildred should have been standing together beside his bed.

Hildred was very quiet. She waited on my father with careful tenderness, and avoided as much as she could speaking to me. When she had done everything for my father, she stood still for a long while looking down at him. Perhaps, like me, she half-envied him his peaceful rest.

Nearly everybody in the village came up in the course of the day to see Cuthbert. The news of his return had spread far and wide, and his old friends thronged to welcome him, hardly able to believe that he was really the Cuthbert Franklyn they had so long talked of as dead. Everybody wished me joy.

'I'm sure I'm as glad as though it had been a son of my own,' said good old Esther Reynolds. 'I knew how you'd feel, Willie, let alone Hildred. Just at this time too, it seems sent to cheer you up a bit, now your father lies so ill. I said so when I heard the news, and that I must make shift to get up to the Castle and tell Willie Lisle how I thought about him; for, as I said to my master, the two boys were wonderful fond of each other—more than most real brothers. Now there are my two lads, quarrelled at the fair last Michaelmas, and haven't so much as spoken one to the t'other since.'

Cuthbert looked at me and I at him, and we held out our hands to each other. Everybody was shaking hands and we were not noticed. As I felt his strong left-handed grasp, something that was like a cloud seemed to roll away from between us.

'It's all right now, old chap,' he said, low enough for no one but me to hear.

So it was 'all right' from that time forth between him and me. But he began by degrees to see that Hildred was changed, and that his fancy the night he had come home was no mistake.

He was very patient and gentle to her, even when she was the most changeable or cold. He never complained; only he often sat still without speaking, with a sad look on his face.

'I must give her time,' he said to me once or twice. 'It will come right by-and-by. I have grown strange to her. Will, I sometimes think this is a judgment on me for the selfish way I went and left her when I first enlisted.'

'You must wait,' I used to say.

'Oh yes, I will; I am trying to be very patient, and I believe that she will come back to me in time.'

I don't think he ever really doubted that. His trust in her, like his love for her, was perfect.

My father's state was reason enough for settling nothing. We all felt it to be a time of waiting. For myself, I looked forward very little. A merciful kind of lull and calmness had come across my life, as I watched over my father's last days.

He died as silently as he had lived. I had wished for some spoken word to tell me he was happy, and that the hand of the Good Shepherd was guiding him through the valley of the shadow of death. But it was not so to be. An upward look; a clasping of the hands; a deep 'Amen,' uttered at the end of the prayers the vicar offered by his bed; a smile when the most comforting of all names was spoken to him. Those were the outward signs he gave.

For the rest, who can tell what was passing in his mind during those silent nights and days?

The end came towards morning, after a night of storm and rain. The wind was shaking the lattice windows and moaning round the ruins. We were all gathered about his bed—Cuthbert and I, Matt Clifford and his wife, and Hildred. When, towards midnight, the strange change that even those who have seen little of death know instinctively, began to come across his face Cuthbert went to fetch them. Everyone was quite quiet except poor Hildred. She could not keep back her sobs, as she knelt with her face hidden on the side of the bed.

I saw Cuthbert move round, and without speaking put his hand on her bowed head.

All seemed unreal and far away to me, except my father's overshadowed face and deep-drawn breath. 'He does not know anything,' said Martha Clifford, watching him.

But as if he somehow felt the coming of the morning, he stirred and opened his eyes, and in a thick indistinct voice he asked the hour.

I bent over and told him.

The next moment he said, 'Is it day-break?'

No, it was still quite dark; but a new, bright unearthly smile came over his face. With a thrill of awe and wonder we looked to see it fade——

'It is over,' Martha Clifford said.

And the smile remained.

---

A few days more, and the slow tolling of the church bell called us to go down and lay our dead under the shadow of the grey belfry.

My father's burial was over, and we had come back to the empty house. All that afternoon I sat by the fire-place in his vacant chair, and tried to think of what I ought to do.

The house was quite silent, and the door, as usual in summer, stood half open.

Somehow I fell to thinking of my mother more than of my father. It was just on such a quiet afternoon as this that I came home years ago, after she was dead, and found Cuthbert near the well. I thought of the message Master Caleb brought me from her, bidding me be as a brother to Cuthbert, and I wondered whether she would still have sent it, if she could have known all that was to follow. What would she have had me do now? The way did not seem clear before me. All my kith and kin were gone. I had seen them carried one by one across the threshold, and had stood by while they were laid to rest in the churchyard down yonder. Mother first; then the kind old grandmother, and now my father. I was as much alone as Cuthbert was when he first came to us. The wheel of life had turned round since then, and left me poor.

Cuthbert stayed with me for some time, sitting in the chair opposite to mine, and trying every now and then, poor fellow, to find something cheering to say to me. But I did not care to talk, so at last he went to the door and let in more sunshine as he pushed it open; then he came back to me, and after putting his hand on my shoulder and saying something about going to look for Hildred he went away.

I was glad to be left alone, though Cuthbert was grave and sad enough, and almost as ready to sit silently thinking as I was. He and my father had never been much to each other. Yet it was the breaking of a long tie, and the losing of the last bit of the old life. Besides, he was unhappy about Hildred.

I suppose a long time passed while I still sat thinking, for the sun came round to the other window, and cast long level rays into the room.

Suddenly a great noise roused me—a loud crash and then a rumbling sound, as if loose stones were falling over one another. Once before I had heard something like it when a part of the Castle wall had fallen. I went out quickly now, towards the part of the ruin that the sound came from.

Hildred met me as I passed under the arch near the keep. She was as pale as death. She clutched my arm and tried to speak. I could barely hear what she said, for some horror seemed to be choking her, and she gasped for breath. She pulled me back in the direction from which she came.

'I have killed him. Come!'

'Hildred what is it? Where is Cuthbert?'

She pointed across the ruins. Still in the same hoarse whisper she said, 'The tower fell in; I took him there.'

It was true; part of the tower had fallen. It was the oldest bit of the ruin, and the walls were mouldering away. I had often warned Hildred that it was unsafe. Now I saw a great heap of massive fallen stones and masonry, and a huge gap in the wall. A bit of the winding stone stair was down. Far above our heads the broken steps began again. Merciful Heaven! was Cuthbert buried under all that?

'Can he be alive?' Hildred gasped, and ended with a long wild scream, as she saw the horror in my face.

'Hush, Hildred, I must get the tools; call Matt; send the boys for help.'

When I came back Matt Clifford was there. Hildred had flung herself down upon the fallen stones and was tearing at the rough masses with her bare hands.

Poor child! I must tell you now, what I heard afterwards, why she said that she had done it. I did not ask then, only worked for dear life, and spoke no words, except a few which I will tell you later.

Cuthbert had found her when he left me. She was thinking of my father, and her heart, she said, was full of longing to come and comfort me in my trouble. 'It seemed hardest of all not to be able to tell you how sorry I was. Your father was always so good to me.'

So when Cuthbert joined her she was cross with him, and reproached him for having left me alone at such a time. He was very gentle and patient, but she would not listen. They wandered on as they talked, and came to this tower. Hildred wanted to get away from him, and began to climb the winding stair, bidding him not follow her. Half way up there was a broken window, out of which we often used to jump as children, on to the wall beneath. She reached this in safety, but Cuthbert had come after her; turning round she saw the stair waver beneath his greater weight. The wall rocked to and fro—bent inwards—and then came the awful crash which I had heard, and Cuthbert was gone.

I knew it was useless, yet I could not help bending down and calling out his name. No answer. A dead silence there, but behind, the welcome sound of hurrying steps, as man after man came up to us, breathless, horror-stricken, eager to help.

We fell to work, working as men only can when life or death seems hanging on their hands. Scarcely a word was uttered. There was only the sound of the pickaxes driven deep down into the heaps of rubbish,—the grating noise of stones raised up and thrown aside—by-and-by the quickened breathing of those who would not stop to rest. On and on, with a grim energy, and agony of suspense, that seemed to double the power in those strong arms and quivering muscles. On and on, with wild words of voiceless prayer ringing in my ears, with thoughts that wandered strangely to my father's funeral, to the tolling of the church bell, to Hildred standing sobbing by the open grave.

She was close beside me. Her hands were torn and bleeding, cut by the sharp stones which she was trying madly to lift up and roll away. The gravel that the spades threw aside, fell all over her, but she did not know it. I lifted her up, for there was not room enough for all the workers, who could give stronger help than hers. She struggled to get away from me, telling me to let her go back and help.

'You cannot help us so,' I said. 'Hildred! poor child, kneel down and pray for us.'

'Oh, I cannot. I do not know how. I am too wicked. Tell me what to say.'

Somehow, the solemn words that we had heard that day, standing by my father's grave, came to my lips, and I repeated them.

'In the midst of life we are in death. Of whom may we seek for succour but of Thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?'

Hildred had fallen on her knees, repeating 'Oh, justly displeased, most justly.'

I was back at work. I heard Hildred say, 'Won't some one pray again?' and presently an old man, the parish clerk, standing near her, said in a broken voice, with many pauses, 'In all time of our tribulation, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment——'

From us all—from poor Hildred—from the eager workers, and the watchers standing by, came as with one voice, the deep response, 'Good Lord, deliver us.'

The time was drawing near when we should know the worst. The great heap of fallen masonry was getting smaller every minute. Could Cuthbert have been saved alive? We came upon great stems of ivy crushed and broken in the ruin. The fresh leaves, unwithered yet, shone out strangely here and there.

Hildred had not moved. She was kneeling, almost lying on the ground. The setting sun was shining in our eyes, dazzling us as we worked, with what seemed to me—calm, pitiless curiosity.

A great stone, almost the last, was lifted on one side. From those in front there suddenly rose a sort of cheer, checked instantly, a smothered exclamation, and then an eager silence, as they bent over something on the ground.

I gave one look, went back to Hildred, and knelt down by her. I burst out crying like a child when I began to speak. I could not help it. Then I took her hand and told her, 'Hildred, dear heart, be comforted. There is hope.'

He was not crushed. God had guarded him. He had fallen in some manner sheltered from the great stones, by the wall and the remains of the staircase. He was half buried under the bits of broken wall, and he lay quite still and unconscious at our feet. But he might be living yet. We carried him out, and laid him down in the sunshine.

Was it life or death—that rigid figure that did not move, that ashen-grey face, with the thin stream of blood trickling from the temple?

Hildred was on the ground beside him, gazing into his face with straining eyes, that seemed as if they must call him back from death itself. She lifted up his arm and tried to put it round her. She called to him, first in a choked whisper, then louder, yet louder, as his silence struck the chill of terror more into her heart.

'Cuthbert, Cuthbert! Oh come back! Forgive me! Dear Cuthbert, speak to me!'

The men stood round watching her. I heard some of them crying, great rough fellows as they were. Hildred looked up at me with bright, widely-opened eyes—no tears in them. Then she spoke to him again, called on him to come back, and she would love him. He heard her. Some tone of hers must have reached him even then. He moved, drew a faint sigh. Oh the low cry she gave! It was not a word or a sob, but just the half-stifled first cry of a new-born hope.

And then Cuthbert opened his eyes, saw her leaning over him, and smiled. She did not speak, only bent down lower, until her face lay hidden by her hands upon his breast.

In a few minutes, very slowly and feebly he raised his hand and put it on her head.

Cuthbert was taken to Clifford's house, which was much nearer at hand than ours. For a few hours more we watched him anxiously. Life came back slowly, but at length the doctor turned away from the bed with a sigh of relief. 'He will do now,' he said cheerily. 'Only keep him quiet. Why, it would never have done to let him slip through our fingers in this sort of way, after his getting over his wounds and escaping out of that Indian prison, as they tell me he did.'

By the next day he could speak to us in a weak voice, and had revived enough to smile a little when Martha told him he had got no more than he deserved, for mooning about in places where Jock himself knew better than to venture.

Towards evening I left him comfortably asleep. Hildred followed me out of the porch, and closed the house door behind her. For a few minutes we did not speak, but stood looking at the setting sun, and thinking—at least I thought—with what different eyes we had seen it going down yesterday, not less peacefully than to-day.

Hildred spoke first, lifting her eyes to mine with a grave rested look that it was new to me to see upon her face.

'God has been merciful,' she said.

'Most merciful.'

'And now——'

My heart was beating fast and heavily. In her grief, in her great terror and her self-reproach, she had seemed to grow dearer to me than ever before; and now that the moment had come—I knew it had—when I must really give her up, I felt as if I could not part with her.

'And now, Willie, I must try to be good at last.' She stopped for a moment, and clasped her hands. 'In that most dreadful time last night, when you told me to pray—when you and the men were working, and I did not know whether or not I had killed him, I made a promise, a solemn promise before God. You know what it was.'

I nodded.

'God gave me back Cuthbert's life. I must try to make it a happy life. I must redeem my promise. Willie, you will help me?'

And so the battle—the hard struggle—was over for her. Well, it was far better so. She was not strong, my darling; she could not have borne a long battle such as a man must fight, so God led her by a short sharp road back to peace.

For a short time we stood together still. Then Hildred turned slowly. 'And now, Willie, just once before I go, I want you to say God bless you.'

As she stood before me looking up at me, I put my hand upon her head, and said, as steadily as I could, 'God bless my dear love for ever, and make her happy.'

The tears were streaming down her face, not bitter tears, but quietly sorrowful. And as I ended she clasped her dear arms for a moment lightly round my neck, and kissed me. That was our farewell. We said no more, and Hildred went away. I watched her until the door closed behind her. When she shut it, the Hildred I loved and who loved me, had passed away from my sight and from my life.

I do not mean that I did not see her, for she was often there when I went to Cuthbert, and after a few days she came with him to the Gatehouse.

Those days, the first of a good many that I had spent quite alone, gave me time to think over many things. My duty began to grow plain to me. Hildred had asked me to help her. I was growing to see more clearly how I could best do so.

Cuthbert got better very quickly. He too, I believe, was thinking a great deal just then of what his future life should be. Hitherto he had been too sad and anxious to make plans, but now that Hildred seemed to have come back to him, he began to wonder how they were to live. He told me so once, when I was sitting by his bed, saying that he would not let it trouble him just yet, he was too happy. Still, he could not help remembering that his pension was very small, and that he had not got two arms like other people. 'I wonder if I can earn enough for Hildred with one arm,' he said. 'Do advise me, Will.'

I asked him to let the future rest for a little longer, and he was content to do so, being weak still, as well as very happy.

In a few days he could walk about again, and one evening he and Hildred came across the ruins and sat down to rest on the old stone bench outside our house. I remember every little thing that happened on that evening, so like, and yet so unlike, any other that I have ever spent. I could almost repeat each word that was said, every-day and purposeless as some of them would have appeared to any one but me.

I felt as if they must guess my secret, when I asked Cuthbert to come home to-morrow and to look after the house and the Castle gate, while I was away.

'Going away!' said Hildred, looking up.

I was obliged to go to Morechester, I told them, to see the man of business who managed everything about the Castle. He must be told of my father's death, and would settle who was to come after him. Long ago it had been promised that I should do so.

'So it's sure to be all right,' said Cuthbert.

'Oh yes, all right.'

Cuthbert was the one of us who talked the most. He went on to say how like old times it was, for us three to be there together. Neither Hildred nor I made much answer, and presently, following the train of his own thoughts, he began to tell us about his soldier life, his last battle, the dreary years of his imprisonment, and then his escape.

I was glad, and so I think was Hildred, to sit silent and hear him talk. I can see her now, listening quietly and gravely, with her hands folded on her lap. I like to remember her in my mother's place. Often since, I have fancied her sitting there.

The twilight drew on. Now and then a bee, heavily laden, went droning past. The sound of the river rippling over the stones below came to us more clearly. One star shone out. We had been sitting without talking for some time, and Hildred said they must go home.

'I shall be gone before you are awake in the morning,' I said. 'I will leave the key for you.'

They bade me good-night, and went away together.

Cuthbert turned, I have often wondered why, after he had gone a few steps, and came back to wring my hand again. 'Good-night, Will,' he repeated. 'I'll take good care of the old place while you're away. Good speed to you on your journey.'

The words sounded to me like a farewell. 'Will you promise to stay until I come back?' I said, still holding his hand. And he answered, laughing, 'Of course.'

I watched them crossing the Castle Court. Cuthbert was leaning on Hildred. She walked slowly and carefully. Once or twice he bent his head down to talk to her, and I saw her look up to answer him. As they went on she put her hand up to his, which was on her shoulder, as if she told him to lean on her more heavily.

So I lost sight of them in the twilight. God bless them both! It was many years before I saw either of them again.

Later at night, when the moon was up, I went all over the ruins. The grey towers were whitened by the moon-beams, and draped in black ivy, with here and there a silver leaf that the light had fallen upon. From the deep shadow cast by the walls and towers, I passed into the full stream of colourless radiance, then back again into darkness.

For many minutes I stood under Hildred's window, against the diamond-shaped panes of which the moon was glittering. 'Sleep peacefully dear love,' I said to her in my heart. 'Wake happily. God give you bright dreams and gladsome days for ever.'

Lastly, I came to the well, and leaning over the edge looked down wearily. There was the reflection of one sparkling star down there, that lay quivering on the black water. I cannot tell how long I stayed thus; for then I began to lose myself.

The rest of that night, the morrow, and many of the days that followed, are almost a blank in my memory—a blank from which some few pictures stand out more or less distinctly.

I see myself standing before sunrise on the bridge, and turning to take a long last look at the old home. A dewy misty morning had come after the moonlight night. By-and-by it would brighten into a cloudless summer's day; but now the mist hung in heavy folds over the Castle. For an instant the morning breeze might blow it aside and show a glimpse of ruined wall and towered gateway, but the next the white curtain floated back again, and all was hidden.

In the strange confusion that was coming over my thoughts it seemed to me as if those fleecy wreaths of mist were rolling over my whole life, and covering up the past from me for ever.

Next I see Morechester, with burning sunlight blazing on the market-place, and church bells sending abroad their golden waves of sound. Suddenly the glare is quenched as I pass under the arched doorway into the Minster. The air strikes chill, there is a great dimness and silence. From the other end of the nave come echoes as of closing gates and distant footsteps, and presently voices are singing. There is an iron gate which I try to open, but it is locked, and red light shines through a curtain. I am shut out. Within there is peace, and prayer, and sweet music rising up to heaven. Outside I kneel alone by the closed gate. Everything is unreal. I feel as though it were the gate of Paradise that is shut against me. But I can catch that in there they are asking the good Lord to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and the sweet pitying voices that sound as if angels were singing, echo the prayer. They, too, are pleading for me, and I am comforted. And the prayers and the music go their way, and seem to carry me up with them towards heaven.

Again I am in a small dark room, and a grave man is listening while I tell a story. He answers me, and I know that I have won my suit. Cuthbert is to have the Gatehouse instead of me. It is promised to him, and a great load is taken off my mind. Now Cuthbert need fear no future for Hildred or himself. There was but that one way to help them both.

It only remained to send the letter I had already written back to Cuthbert.

It was a good thing that it had been written slowly and carefully beforehand, for now I could not hold my thoughts together, or keep them on one thing for many minutes. In the letter I had told Cuthbert the truth, though not the whole truth. I said that I had grown restless of late, and Wyncliffe had become wearisome to me, so I had gone forth into the world to seek my fortune; and that, if I left them all without saying good-bye they must forgive me—leave-takings were but dreary things; and I knew well how in their kindness they would try to keep me back if they heard that I was going. The rest was easy to say. Cuthbert must know how much rather I would think of him in the old place than of a stranger. He would believe that he was doing me a kindness in filling the post I had given up, so that the life-long tie that bound me to Wyncliffe would be still unbroken, and some one would live in the Gatehouse who loved it as much as I always should, though I was leaving it. I hoped that he and Hildred would be happy there, as we had been long ago.

Then I remember, but very dimly and confusedly, long days of travel, one after the other, during which the only thing I cared for was to get on quickly, farther yet farther, so as to put the greatest distance between myself and all the places I had ever seen.

After that an unknown room; strange, but kindly faces bending over a bed on which I lay, my own voice repeating always, 'Hildred—Cuthbert—little Jock, good-bye,' until my brain seemed to turn round with the weary words.

The thread of memory breaks there.

I find myself again, crossing a moor on an autumn evening. The heather is in bloom still, and looks purple-red in the low rays of the sun. The wide heath, rising and falling like the waves of the sea, stretches on to join the sky. Poised high aloft, on quivering wings, a sky-lark sings its cloud-song. And far away, backed by the golden sunset, there rises the spire of a little church, with a village clustering round it. I am bound there. There is a pack on my shoulders, for I am a pedlar, and am beginning to get the name you have all called me by for so many years. I am Wandering Willie. In those days I had little heart to care what I became. My life seemed to be over. I little thought how long it would yet last.

But it has not been a sad one, though its story, such as it is, ended on the day when I looked my last on the mist-covered towers of Wyncliffe.

The sharp edge of sorrow wears down with time. Peace, the evergreen, grows where joy once blossomed. The road-side flowers bloom fresh and fair, though the garden has been left behind. I would not have things otherwise than as they are. I would not have my youth back, though all I once longed for so passionately were granted with it.

Youth can rarely say I am content, as I can. Young limbs must breast the mountain side, and I have gained the top.

Hildred and Cuthbert lived long and happily. It was some years before I let Cuthbert know where I was. Then immediately he came to me. After that we saw each other every now and then; and though meeting seldom, we were yet friends and brothers, as we had always been. There never was another secret between us. Hildred long before had told her husband all the story of his four years of absence.

But I never went back to Wyncliffe until I was an old man.

It was after an illness that I had, during which my thoughts turned constantly to Hildred. A longing for her presence, that had been stilled for many years, woke up once more and drew me towards her.

When next Cuthbert came to see me I went back with him to Wyncliffe. As in a dream, nay rather, as one returning from the dead, I saw again the once familiar places—the grey church, the lime-trees, the village-green, where they were playing cricket just as they used in my day. No one knew the old man. All the faces that I met were strange to me; some only bore a dim ghostly likeness to people I had known.

Once or twice Cuthbert told me the name of a passer-by, as we went along slowly under the lime-trees.

That was Jock Clifford's son, with the bat over his shoulder, a young man, fair and ruddy, but twice as old as his father was when I last saw him. From one of the cottages a child ran out, a brown-eyed toddling little girl, who came towards Cuthbert with a scream of pleasure, and called him grandfather. 'Our boy Will's little lass,' said Cuthbert, raising her on to his shoulder. He called to a woman passing by and bade her come and see an old friend. She came with the hesitating look of one who is told to speak to a stranger. 'You do not know him, Phillis,' Cuthbert said.

Was that Phillis, Hildred's little niece, the laughing rosy child that I remembered? Could this be her?

My heart failed me. The day that I belonged to had indeed passed away. I could not bear to see Hildred grown strange to me like the rest.

It was not that I should love the altered face less, far from it. But I had carried the young bright image of my one love for so long in my heart, I could not bear to lose it.

For those who lived with her, each line, each change, must have grown dear. To me they would be strange, and I feared lest afterwards I might never be able to call back again the gracious presence that had cheered my lonely life.

So, as twilight was over before we reached the Castle, I begged Cuthbert to leave me by the old well, and to bring Hildred to me there, that, in the darkness, I might hold her hand and hear her voice once more, then go my way, and still think of her without one shadow on her face that time or care had thrown.

Cuthbert, willing to do my pleasure though he but half understood me, obeyed my wish.

It was not for long that he left me alone, yet in those few minutes my whole life seemed to pass before me. Near me, above the well, were the old carved words of the promise I had once doubted. It had been too hard for me to make out when I was a child—it was too dark to read it now; yet even in this world it had been fulfilled. That cup of cold water given a life-time ago, had in no wise lost its reward. Cuthbert and Hildred had been happy. And for me, when I was left alone, God Himself drew nigh and was my Friend; though there had been some darkness on my way, the Light of lights, ever brightening, was shining on it.

Thinking thus, I saw that a figure came towards me swiftly through the darkness.

I took the hands she held out to me in my own, and heard her say, 'Willie, welcome home.'

Just for a few moments the weight of years was lifted off our heads, and Hildred and I were boy and girl once more.

We did not say much, nor did I stay long with her. I was content to have been near her, and to have listened to her voice. We parted presently, with a blessing spoken quietly, as befitted those who had once loved each other well, but whom God in His good providence had parted, and who never looked to meeting in this world again. And I went away.

So the two faces I have loved the most, Hildred's and my mother's, never grew old for me, but shine on me still, and are for ever young, for ever fair.

And I think that when I see them next they will be fairer yet, for they will have 'put on immortality.'