"Poor old fellow!" he murmured, as he saw the man walk haltingly and painfully up the road and disappear around the little bend.
Left to himself Seymour stumbled alone along the familiar road over which a few short months before he had often travelled light-heartedly by the side of Katharine. As he pressed on, he noticed a man leave the boat-house and climb slowly up the hill. Desirous of escaping the notice of the stranger, who, he supposed, might be the factor or agent of the plantation, he waited in the shadow of the trees until the man disappeared over the brow of the hill, and then he staggered on. A short time after, he stood on the landward end of the little pier, and then his heart stood still for a second, and then leaped madly in his breast, as he seemed to hear a subtle voice, like an echo of the past, which whispered his name, "Seymour! Seymour!" Stepping toward the middle of the pier so that he could see the interior of the boat-house through the inner door, his eyes fell upon the figure of a woman standing in the other doorway looking out over the water, stretching out her hands. The sun had set by this time, and the gray dusk of the evening was stealing over the river. He could not see distinctly, but there was light enough to show him a familiar scarlet cloak at her feet, and although her back was turned to him, he recognized the graceful outlines of her slender figure. It was Katharine, or a dream! But could the dead return again? Had the sea given up her dead indeed?
He could not believe the evidence of his bewildered senses. It might be an hallucination, the baseless fabric of a vision, some image conjured from the deep recesses of his loving heart by his enfeebled disordered imagination, and yet he surely had heard a living voice, "Seymour—John—Oh, my love!" Stifling the beating of his heart, holding his breath even, stepping softly, lest he should affright the airy vision, he staggered to the door and stood gazing; then he whispered one word,—
"Katharine!"
It was only a whisper she heard, but it reached the very centre of her being.
"Katharine," he said softly again, with so much passionate entreaty in his wistful voice, that under its compelling influence she slowly turned and looked toward the other door from whence the sound had come. Then as she saw him, lifting one hand to her head while the other unconsciously sought her heart, she shrank back against the wall, and stared at him in voiceless terror. He dropped unsteadily to his knee, as if to worship at a shrine.
"Oh, do not go away," he whispered. "I know it is only a dream of mine—so many times have I seen you, ever since the night the frigate struck and I sent you to your death on that rocky pass, in that beating sea. Ay, in the long hours of the fever—but you did not shrink away from me then, you listened to me say I love you, and you answered." He stretched out his hand toward her in tender appeal. She bent forward toward him. He rose to his feet, half in terror.
"Kate," he said uncertainly, "is it indeed you? Are you alive again?"
She was nearer now. One glad cry broke from her lips; he was in her arms again, and she was clasped to his heart!—a real woman and no dream, no vision. What the wind could only faintly shadow forth upon her cheek, sprang into life under the touch of his fevered lips, and color flooded them like a wave. Laughing, crying, sobbing, she clung to him, kissed him with little incoherent murmurs, gazed at him, wept over him, kissed him again. All the troubles of the intervening days of sadness and privation faded away from her like a disused chrysalis, and she sparkled with life and love like a butterfly new born.
He that was dead was alive again, he had come back, and he was here! As for him, in fearful surprise, he held her to his breast once more, still unbelieving. She noticed then an empty sleeve, and raised it tenderly to her lips.