Maurice stared at his rugged face peering above the round lamp which he held.
"End Cottage?"
"Yes, sir. The poor lady took it on a six months' lease, but I hear she's—"
But Maurice had turned away with a muttered:
"I'll send up for the luggage."
He stumbled out into the white lane and through the little village. One or two lads, roughly dressed and sprinkled with snowflakes, eyed him from the shelter of the inn porch. As he moved past them, he heard their muttered comments. He left the houses behind and found himself among snow-laden trees. End Cottage was hidden in this narrow wood which was generally full of the sound of the waterfall.
Now the waterfall was silent, motionless, a dead thing in a rocky grave. Maurice saw a faint and misty light among the bare trees. It came from his old home, and now his hand touched the white garden gate, prickly with ice. He pushed it open and stole up the path till he reached the little porch of the cottage. As he stood there his heart beat hard and his breath fluttered in his throat. It seemed to him that there must be some strange and terrible meaning in Lily's presence here. With a shaking hand he pulled at the bell. He waited. No one came. He heard no step. The silence was dense, even appalling. After a long pause he turned the handle of the door, opened it, and stood on the threshold of the cottage. Instead of entering at once he waited, listening for any sound of life within the house, for the voices or footsteps of those inhabiting it.
Just so had he waited on a summer night long ago, with the moon behind him and leaf-laden trees. He listened, and, after a moment of profound stillness, he heard—as he had heard in that very place so long ago—the faint cry of a child. It came from within the house, clear and distinct though frail and feeble.
Involuntarily Maurice moved a step backward into the snow. Horror overwhelmed him. The dead child was here then with Lily, in his old abode. The spirit was not laid to rest. It had only deserted him for a while to greet him again here, to take up again here its eternal persecution; and this resurrection appalled and unmanned him more than all the persistent haunting of the past. He was dashed from confidence to despair. The little cry paralysed him, and he leaned against the wall of the porch almost like a dying man.
And again he heard the cry of the child.