“One word, Master Geoffrey. Jack——”
Her trembling lips refused to utter another word, and the young man thought he might as well tell her at once about her husband and set her heart at rest.
“Jack is living and well, and—within a mile of you at this very moment,” he said, in a cheerful tone.
“Oh, dearie! Heaven reward you for those blessed words,” Margery murmured; then her head sank upon her breast, and, tottering weakly forward, she dropped upon the rock where Geoffrey had first seen her, and fell to sobbing like a tired child.
Geoffrey waited until she had grown somewhat calmer, and then told her, as briefly as he could, something of his own and Jack’s history during the last eighteen years.
She never interrupted him during the recital, but seemed to drink in every word, as one perishing from thirst would drink in pure, life-giving water.
When at last he had told her all, she lifted her face, and, while she wiped the streaming tears from her eyes, she exclaimed:
“Ah! Master Geoffrey, I feel almost as if I was drawing nigh to heaven, after all the waiting, the wandering, the loneliness, and misery, to find my Jack again, and know that he has been true to his love for me all the time. Poor fellow! his fate has been harder than mine, after all, for he’s had to carry a burden of guilt with him; but it is all over now, thank Heaven! You will take me straight to him?” she concluded, eagerly.
“Of course I will,” Geoffrey replied, heartily, “he is waiting at the public house in the town for me; waiting for me to come and tell him about his old home, from which he fled so many years ago, and about a certain grave, which he has imagined has lain lonely and neglected all that time, and which he was to go to visit, under cover of the darkness, upon my return.”
“Poor man! poor man!” sobbed Margery, all unmindful of her own long suffering, in her sympathy for her erring husband, “but, praise the Lord, there’s no grave for him to weep over, and he can walk the earth once more and fear no man.”