How radiant she had looked at St. Gabriel's that first night, when he came in out of the cold and darkness and saw her standing like a goddess of sunshine with her yellow hair gleaming above her green robe!
How graciously she had smiled upon him when he made friends with Cecil; how tenderly she had looked at him when he offered to seek Father Mohl and beg his pardon! Here came a swift pang as the bitterness of those dark days that followed the priest's death swept over him. His lips framed the word "Unjust!" Then lifting his head he shook back the hair, and looking up cried aloud,—
"No, though it were with my last breath, and though she should never breathe again, I vow to God, I thank Him for it all, justice and injustice alike, else had I never known how she loved me."
Up and down the street to the edge of the bluff the fight still raged around them, as one group of stragglers met another of the opposing force. None could say which had lost or won.
As for Neville, he had no care for what passed around him. All the world held for him lay there on the ground. Oh, God! would those dark-fringed eyes never open? Would those pallid lips never again redden to their old-time warmth, nor curve into their old-time tender wistfulness, nor open in the old-time gracious speech?
For one awful moment, Neville felt that this was indeed the end, and bowing his head he murmured, "It has—been—worth—while!"
The first sensation Elinor knew after her fall was a rushing of water over face and neck, a gurgling in her ears and a gasping as of some dying animal near by, then a curious realization that the gasping animal was herself, and that a sound of voices rang far and vague around her. Gradually through her closed lids gathered a dim light which, as she opened her eyes, grew to a glory dazzling as though it streamed from the great white Throne, and shadowed against it was the outline of a familiar face, long dear to memory and of late enshrined in her heart of hearts,—the face of Christopher Neville.
"So," she murmured, "this is Heaven that lies beyond. I always said death would be nothing if we could be sure of that."
Then the black curtain fell again, and the next sound that struck her consciousness was Cecil's voice calling,—
"Mother! Mother! Wake up! Dick Ingle is fled, and the broidery on my coat is torn, and the Church of Our Lady is burned to the ground, and we are very hungry, and there is but corn meal in the house—oh! and Ralph Ingle—"