Maurice lay fast asleep, breathing quietly, and more natural of hue—a frail bark rejected by the great tide that washes so hungrily round the shores of the little island of life, and whose receding is nearly as full of awe as its oncoming. To the man and the woman looking at him the spray of that ocean seemed still wet in his curls.

"You have given him back to me," said Horatia in a voice less than a whisper, and, to herself, more faintly still, "God did not ask all."

For answer Tristram stooped and kissed her son.

In the doorway he looked back, and at last the toll levied on human nerves by days of so much strain and anguish was demanded of him. A momentary hallucination of the senses—nothing but that, he knew it—but all his life it was to remain with him, in mysterious consolation, that for one heart-beat he saw there, in Horatia's place, a Woman wrapped, like her, in a blue mantle glinting with light, kneeling in adoration of a Child.

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

The barrel-organ which was grinding out "Keemo Kimo" changed with a hiccough to "Bobbing Around," and the ring of tattered dancers likewise made some alteration in their steps. Five very dirty little girls composed the corps de ballet, and a small boy industriously kicking an empty can along the gutter added further orchestral harmony. This youth had already rejected the offer of his peers to "play at the Relief of Lucknow," having learnt by experience that the rôle of a Sepoy was unenviable, that it was vain ever to aspire to the part of Sir Colin Campbell, and still retaining, in this autumn of 1859, unpleasant recollections of the massacre of Cawnpore, as staged by the same players in a certain backyard two years ago.

Had it been daylight this long street of the great seaport town would have showed for what it was, a slum, but the evening darkness of the last day of October veiled some of its worst features, while it caused the radiance pouring from the Dockers' Arms, half-way along it, to gain tenfold in attraction. Outside this resort two sailors were engaged in a muddled argument, not sufficiently foreshadowing blows to recall the now scattered impersonators of the Indian Mutiny, but interesting enough to cause the pensive child with the can to direct his football towards them with a gleam of hope. He was rewarded otherwise than he had foreseen, and, after a moment's delighted gazing along the vista beyond the public-house, abandoned his tin and ran back towards the dancers.

"Victorier! Victorier! there's a swell coming! I seen 'im—coming this way!"

The conviction in her brother's tone detached Victorier from her pirouetting. She followed his finger and saw that his imagination had not betrayed him, as sometimes, into falsehood, for a figure answering indubitably to his description came at that moment into the light of the Dockers' Arms, the half-drunken sailors made way for it, and, in a moment or two, the organ, now ploughing mournfully through "Poor Dog Tray," had lost its fascination, and Victorier's fellow-artistes, were all standing at gaze.