One day, as the sun was going down behind those massive castle towers, filling the sky so richly with gold and crimson, that the red flag was lost among its fiery billows, an old woman stood on the highway, with a hand uplifted to shade her eyes, as she searched for the old flag.
There was dust upon her leathern shoes and on the black folds of her alpaca dress, for she had walked from the railway station, and the roads were dry.
"Ah, how the trees have grown!" she said, mournfully, dropping her hand. "I never, never thought to be so near Houghton and not see the flag. Is my lady dead?"
The old woman was so distressed by the thought, that she sat down on a bank by the wayside, and over her came that dry, hard foreboding, which forbids tears to old eyes, but holds the worn heart like a vise. Thus, with her eyes fixed on the dusty road, she sat till all those bright clouds melted into the coming night; then she looked up and saw the great red flag streaming out against a sea of purplish gray, as it had done when she was a girl, seventy years ago.
"My lady is alive. She is there. Oh! my God! make me thankful!" she exclaimed, standing up in the road. "Through all, I shall see her again."
So she moved on, carrying a leathern travelling bag, worn and rusty, in her feeble hand. Along the highway, up to the gates of that noble park, she travelled with the slow, toilsome step of old age; but when she came to the gates they were closed, and her voice was so feeble that it failed to reach the lodge, from which she could see lights gleaming through the twinkling ivy leaves.
In patient disappointment the old woman turned from the gate, and walked on half a mile farther, for she knew of a small public house where a night's lodging could be obtained. She reached this low stone building after dark, and entered it quietly, like a gray ghost.
It was a strange guest to enter that tap-room, with her dusty garments and her old satchel. The villagers, who were taking their beer comfortably, lifted their eyes in astonishment at her sudden appearance, and they rounded with wonder, as she passed through the room and entered the kitchen naturally, as if she had belonged to the premises all her life.
No one in the house remembered the old woman. A curly-headed girl named Susan, had flitted like a bird about that kitchen the last time she had entered it, and now, when a man's voice called out "Susan!" she started and looked around in a dazed way, expecting the bright eyed girl would come dancing through the door. But instead appeared an elderly woman, with quantities of coarse black hair, smoothed under her cap. A linen apron, large and ample, protected her stuff dress, and a steel chatelaine, to which were suspended scissors, a needle case and tiny money box rattled at her side.
"Well, what is to do now, Stephen?" said the landlady, brushing some crumbs from her apron, for she had been cutting bread.