'Well!' said my father at last, when the pipe was out and the fire had

almost smouldered away.

I shook my head. 'Cuthbert trusted me, and after all he may be living

yet.'

'Not he.' He took his stick, and as he got up slowly from his arm-chair

to go to bed, he added, 'You should think a bit of Hildred, too,

Willie.'

'Of Hildred!'

'She gave Cuthbert up for dead long ago, and she sees you mostly every

day.'

With that he went upstairs, leaning on my shoulder, and would not say

another word except 'Good night.'

Good night! as if I could sleep with all this in my mind. Then Hildred

knew now how I loved her, not as Cuthbert's brother, not as her old

playfellow, but with a love as strong, as deep, longer far than his had

been.

And she? Until now, whenever I believed, as sometimes I did, that

Cuthbert was dead, my only thought had been that at some time in the

years to come, when we knew all for certain, I might comfort her--that

she might get to care for me, not as she had cared for her first love,

but gradually a little, because I loved her so much, and so that she

might grow at last to be content.

And now to be told, as my father had told me to-night, that I ought to

think of Hildred's happiness. Was it possible that her happiness could

depend the least on me? Could it be that her hope of seeing Cuthbert

again was gone, and that her love had faded with her hope? She was so

young--scarcely eighteen--when he left her. Her gentle nature was not

made to stand alone. It might be that in its loneliness her heart had

turned, without her knowing it, to the guardian who strove so hard to

hide his love for her.

The rain was still pattering against the window, and the wind blew in

gusts through the ruins, but I took no heed of the storm. I was happy.

I think that hour, sitting alone in the chimney-corner, while the last

sparks were dying out of the peat fire, was the happiest of all my

life. For I only thought of Hildred, of how perhaps some day she would

come and turn all my life into brightness. I had never dreamed, since

Cuthbert went away, that she could ever care for me, and now what a

dream it was! I remember it because it never came to me again, because

I woke suddenly and the dream was gone. I do not know where it took me,

or how long it lasted, but in it Hildred was my own. We were together.

Then suddenly it seemed as if Cuthbert stood before me, and I could not

meet his eyes, full of a grave reproach as he looked from me to Hildred.

My promise! I got up and paced the room with rapid steps--that cruel

promise. Was I never to be free from it? All my life was it to drag

me back from happiness and bind me fast in misery? If it was broken,

what worse could come of it than this? It would not haunt me any longer

then. No one would reproach me--no one would suffer by it. At all

events I must take my chance of that. A broken promise! Why, it was not

fit to weigh for a moment against the happiness of two whole lives. I

should forget it, I must, surely in a little while; if not, who cared?

A whole storm of dark thoughts came sweeping over me; thoughts

that I cannot recall even now without a shudder--anger against

Cuthbert--bitter rebellion against my fate--a mocking contempt for

myself that I had kept the promise sacred hitherto. What promise ever

held true? I thought. Master Caleb's old puzzle came back to me,--how

the cup of water that was given in Christ's name was in no wise to lose

its reward; yet it had caused my mother's death, and following step by

step, from that one act came all my troubles. That had proved false

then, like all the rest, false as I was myself. Did it prove false?

The very saying of the holy Name--the sacred words--the remembrance of

my mother's trustful face--of Dorothy's quietly-spoken confidence--all

this calmed me, and in the black darkness I fell suddenly on my knees,

and said--

'Oh, Mother's God, who wert to her a sure refuge, come now and help me!'

As I prayed, a strange feeling came upon me that my prayer rose up

even into the presence of a merciful listening God. The storm did not

cease, the trouble was not rolled away, but there came a little rift

into the dark clouds over me, a little speck of light shone through the

blackness, as if a voice said, 'Oh, thou poor soul, be comforted; I

will help thee!'

I think that was my first real prayer.

The next day was Sunday. The storm had quite passed over before the sun

rose, and the grass sparkled with silver rain-drops. The river swept

past beneath, with a fuller flow; the robins made the air bright with

their merriment, rejoicing that, as they hopped from twig to twig, they

shook down showers of lazy brilliant drops from off the boughs.

It seemed strange that such a storm could pass, and leave no deeper

traces behind.

Over my life, too, a storm had come last night, but it was followed

by no sunny morning. I was quieter, however, for my mind was made up.

Weary with much thinking I put off until the afternoon that which I

felt I ought to say to Hildred.

She, and Clifford's two boys, Robin and Walter, walked home together

after church, and little Jock and Phillis were with me. As we passed

under the yew tree, I asked Hildred to stay with me for a few minutes.

The children went on, and Hildred and I were both silent, listening

to their merry voices as they died away. I did not know what to say

first.--At last I asked her abruptly, if she remembered how Cuthbert

bade her good-bye here.

She said yes, she remembered it quite well.

I took her hand and said--I know my voice was trembling--'You have not

forgotten him!'

'Oh no,' she answered; 'poor Cuthbert!'

'Sister!'--I had never called her by that name before--'when he went

away he left you to me to take care of, and he asked me to talk about

him to you, that you never might forget him. We have not spoken of him

lately as often as we used, but it has not made any difference. If he

were to come back he would find us just the same.'

She was silent.

'Eh, Hildred?'

'I shall always remember him,' she said in a low voice.

'And watch for his coming back?'

'Oh Willie, poor Cuthbert is dead.'

'Don't say that, Hildred--don't think it. I know that every one here

believes it, but I don't. Some day we shall see him again.'

She sat down on the bank, with her hands, which she had clasped

together, lying listlessly in her lap. I saw she did not share in my

belief, and when I repeated 'He will come back to you,' she only shook

her head.

'But at least'--I asked the question almost in a whisper--'at least you

love him the same as ever?'

'It all seems so long ago,' she said, simply.

I turned away, angry with myself that the words gave me such a thrill

of pleasure--almost angry with her for making me unfaithful. We were

both false to him, for I had let her forget him.

'Oh Hildred,' I said, not speaking as I felt, 'and he loved you so

dearly.'

My voice must have been very reproachful, though in truth the reproach

was against myself, not against her, poor child. The tears came into

her eyes, but she only repeated what she had said before: 'It does seem

so very long ago.'

I did not know how to go on. For a time neither of us spoke. At last

she said, 'Is it very wrong of me?'

'Wrong, Hildred! no,' I answered sadly. 'You were so young when he left

you, that I suppose it was too hard for you to remember. Only, how

could we meet him if he came back?'

She looked frightened. 'You don't really think he will.'

'God only can tell that--we must do everything as if we expected him. I

know that if he were here it would be all right; you would only need to

see him again. But Hildred'--I had come now to the most difficult thing

I had to say,--'Hildred, my father told you, last night, something

about me, that I never meant you to hear. It must be, for both of us,

as if it had never been told.'

'Is it true?' she asked, without looking up.

'Yes.'

After a little while I said, 'Don't let it come between us. Let me be

your brother still, and Cuthbert's.'

Hildred tried to say, 'Thank you.' Her tears were falling down slowly

upon the clasped hands in her lap.

'Don't cry, dear, don't be sorry.'

'You have been so good to me,' she whispered.

They were very simple words. I don't quite know how it was, that I knew

from them that she had grown to love me. I bent down, pressing my hands

tightly together to force back the rising words.

Hildred that saw it was hard for me. She touched my arm with her hand,

saying softly, 'Never mind me, Willie; I will try to be very good.' But

her voice failed again, and she drew a long sobbing sigh. 'Oh, I am so

tired--so tired of being unhappy.'

Harder still then--too hard. She was not made to bear trouble, but to

be loved and taken care of. She scarcely seemed to understand now, why

I could not comfort her as I always had hitherto.

The longing to take her home and try to make her happy, was stronger

than I could bear. I could not be faithful to Cuthbert any longer. He

was dead--again and again some voice whispered it in my ear. I believed

it at last. He was dead, and he would never know. My first duty was to

Hildred, for surely time and death had released me from my promise, and

I knew now that she cared for me more than she had ever cared for him.

I knelt down beside her. I began to speak. What saved me? I scarcely

know. Suddenly, far off in the evening stillness, some one began to

whistle. My thoughts flew back to Cuthbert.

I went away from Hildred and leant over the wall, with my head resting

on my arms. It was last night's battle over again, but harder, inasmuch

as I knew Hildred's feeling now. I felt that upon my doing right

depended more than the happiness of her life and of my own. I have

heard that men have two angels, an evil and a good, who follow them

through life. It seemed to me that they were both beside me then. But

the good angel's shining eyes were growing sorrowful and dim, and the

other (oh, why did it take a shape like Hildred's to tempt me) put out

a hand to draw me nearer. Almost in despair I tried to pray. Those

words--earliest learnt, and most familiar in all the world--the blessed

words of Our Lord's Prayer, with its petition to be delivered from evil

and temptation, came to my lips, and I repeated them.

Just then--it seems but a small thing--the whistle sounded again nearer

at hand. Loud and clear came to my ears, Cuthbert's favourite old tune

'Over the hills and far away.' In a second it brought him before me,

not as the distant soldier we had thought of as dead--not as Hildred's

lover--but as my own boy-brother, the dear old Cuthbert of our happy

days. All my love for him rushed back. I thought how unfaithful I had

been to him, and my tears fell like rain down on the old wall.

So help had come. A second time God's mercy won the battle for me, even

against myself.

After a time I went back to Hildred and took her hand. I cannot tell

you what I said to her, but I wondered at myself for being able to

speak so quietly. I told her how I had loved her all her life--not many

words about that, for I had found that I could not trust myself, but I

reminded her of the trust we held together, and that Cuthbert had left

his heart fearlessly in her hands and mine. And I said, 'We must not

fail him. To be true and faithful will be better for you, and happier

too, dear, in the end.'

Hildred took her hand from mine, but she did not speak. Only, when I

had said all I could, she whispered, 'Good-bye, Willie,' and turned to

go away.

'Hildred, you understand me,' I could not help saying. She looked back,

trying hard to smile, but her lips quivered sadly. She said, 'I am sure

you know best, Willie.'

And then she left me.

* * * * *

In the years that I have led a wandering life, it has been my fate to

hear many stories told. From wayfaring men, whose path has led them

for a time to journey with me--from travelled folk--from old people,

to whom (as after this you will know well) the memory of their youth

and the sound of their own voices is ever dear--from young ones full of

themselves and of the world, that is still new to them--from all these

I have heard many a tale.

In the summer twilight, when the stars are brightening--on lonesome

roads where there is little to speak of or to look for, except the

mile-stones--in crowded towns, I have listened to story after story.

Oftenest of all, beside some friendly fireside, on a winter's night

such as this is. The best stories come out then, the longest and the

strangest, sometimes the saddest. I have been reckoned a good listener

in my day. It is not easy to be weary, hearing of human hopes and

fears, of human hearts and troubles.

But what I wanted to say just now is this: I have seen that the best

story-tellers, those that get the most rapt listeners, put a great deal

of change into what they tell. They are fond of passing suddenly from

one thing to another, a sad bit, then a bright bit--a sunny day and

then a stormy night. They make you cry one minute, and the next you

are laughing with them. And so they go on, black and white, light and

shade, for ever. I hope you will forgive me that I do not know how to

do this. It must be the right thing in a story, since it succeeds so

well, but I cannot see that it is thus in nature. The sunshine and the

shadow do not fall by rule, one following the other. They come and go

at will. Sometimes a whole day's journey lies under an overcast sky,

at others scarcely a cloud comes across the sun from its rising to its

setting.

I would weave my story willingly after this chequered pattern if I

could, but it is told in sober earnest, and I must just go on in my own

fashion to the end, which is not so far off now.

My father did not know what to make of it when nothing came of what he

had said to Hildred, and all went on seemingly much as usual.

According to his custom he asked no questions, only gave sundry vexed

impatient looks at the door, and at Martha Clifford, when for several

days she came in alone to wait on him. On her part she went about

with pursed-up lips and a heavy step, setting things to rights with a

sort of fling, meant to show that in some way she felt herself to be

ill-used.

'Ah,' she began at last, seeing as she came in, that my father's eyes,

as usual, looked beyond her in the hope of seeing Hildred following, 'I

see well enough what you are after, neighbour Lisle. But I don't mean

to put up with it any longer, that I don't.'

'What'll she be at now?' asked my father, looking up at me.

'Willie knows right well. I told him how it would be if he went on

about Cuthbert Franklyn any longer, talking to Hildred and scaring

her. There's the girl been crying all night: Phillis heard her. But

there'll be an end to it all, for I am going to send her away to her

aunt in Morechester. She'll be left in peace there, at all events.'

Martha kept her word. Prayers and promises availed nothing. She sent

Hildred to Morechester, to be shut up all through the bright summer

in a hot town, in rooms above a shop. Her aunt, a good woman enough I

believe, lived in one of those quaint old houses in the market-place,

that had a carved wooden gallery running round it, and a high-pitched

roof with a gilt weathercock at the top.

They told me Hildred was content to be there. On market days I used to

see her standing in the old-fashioned bow-window, watching the busy

scene round the Cross--watching perhaps, I thought, for me. It was the

moment in each week I lived for. They would not let me go and see her.

She always had a bright colour, and a smile when I caught sight of her,

but even from that distance I could see that she was growing thin.

They left her there for many months, poor child, till long after the

summer days were gone. Late in autumn Matt Clifford's heart smote him

at her wistful face, as he was bidding her good-bye one day, and he

brought her home.

Martha talked and scolded, blamed Hildred for looking ill, Matt for

giving in to her when it was not for her real good, and me, for

meaning, as of course I did, to begin again doing all I could towards

wearing Hildred into her grave.

Clifford--I had never liked him so well--came and spoke to me himself,

in a manly, straightforward way, and with a fairness that gave double

weight to all his words. Hildred had no one but him and his wife,

belonging to her, he said. He stood in her father's place, and wished

to do his duty by her the same as if she was one of his own children.

If he spoke now it was because he thought that it was right he should,

not because he cared to meddle and make; 'as you know well enough,

Will,' he added with a half smile, 'seeing how many years I have let

things be and have said nothing either way.' 'He was sure,' he went on,

'that I had meant to do rightly by Hildred and Cuthbert both. As far

as he could see, I could have done nothing but wait to see if Cuthbert

would come home. When a man gave his word, why, he must stick to it.

But there was an end to everything: the living ought not to suffer

for the dead. To his mind it was time now to think a little more

of Hildred. 'For betwixt you both,' said Clifford, looking up again

with his grave smile, 'she is getting wasted to a shadow. What with

Cuthbert's going away, and never sending a word home, and with your not

letting her believe--as they tell me--that Cuthbert is dead and gone,

what with all this, there'll be naught left of her soon. I tell you

where it is, Will: I want to have her forget; if he's dead, fretting

won't bring him back; if so be as he's alive, you'll never make me

think he couldn't have sent so much as a line home to his sweetheart in

these many years. I don't want to think so badly of him,' said Clifford

'as that he's living still.'

'Did you never think he might have been made prisoner?' I asked.

'I never think anything, but that he was killed, as David Moore told

us. Hearing that, you are set free concerning any word you passed to

him. That being so, I ask you now what you are going to do.'

I was silent.

'I should have no call to speak,' Clifford went on frankly, 'no call

whatsoever, if Hildred had not been told by your father that you had

been partial to her yourself, as long ago as before Cuthbert went.

Maybe it was no business of his to tell--that I must leave--but as she

knows it, for my wife had it from your father himself (Hildred never

spoke a word), how can we look for her to settle down, seeing you every

day?'

'What is it you would have me do?' I asked.

'I don't want you to marry the girl, mind,' said her brother, with a

sort of pride for her in his voice. 'I don't want her to marry anybody,

God bless her, unless she likes. As long as I am spared she has a home

with me, and welcome. But I should wish to say to her--if so it is to

be--that she needn't think any more of either you or him. She's but

young yet, and my hope is that she'll turn her mind to some one else,

after a bit. Still, I seem to feel vexed for you, Will. You are very

fond of her, and I think, though she doesn't say a word, that she's

very fond of you. It seems as though it were a pity to waste your two

lives just for what I call an idea.'

'Will you give me a little time to think it over?' I asked, more

perplexed than I had ever been before.

'To be sure,' he said heartily. 'I don't require you to do aught in

haste. But consider that here's Christmas a-coming round again, and

it'll be two years come Christmas Day since we heard for certain that

Cuthbert was dead. It don't seem likely,' and Matt grew quite warm,

'it don't seem natural that he'd never have sent home a line--being in

life--just to say "Don't mourn along o' me, dear friends, for I'm above

ground yet." That's how I look at it.'

It is no good telling you all I thought. There has been too much about

my thoughts already. I had striven so long to keep the balance even;

it needed but a feather-weight to make it tremble now. Clifford's

reasoning--Hildred's forced smiles--the thought that it was possible,

after all that had come and gone, that she could ever turn her mind to

some one else, some happy man who would be free to woo her, and would

win her heart at last--these were not feather-weights. The length of

time did make some difference too. Cuthbert himself would surely say

that I had waited long enough honestly to fulfil his trust. I pondered

over my answer to Matt's question for a whole month. At the end the

balance was not even any longer.

There was one chance left of my getting good advice, for Master Caleb

Morton was coming to spend the Christmas holidays at Furzy Nook. All

my hopes were fixed on asking his counsel. We had not met since the

beginning of all my troubles, more than four years ago.

Well, he came, and what was more, his wife and Mrs. Janet came with

him. Such a welcome as they got from all Wyncliffe! It was a long while

before I could get a quiet time to tell my story.

'There are no two ways about it,' said Mrs. Janet. She was the first to

break a long silence, after all was told. She stood, knitting-needles

in hand, working vigorously while she talked. 'There are no two ways

about it. It is Willie's duty to marry Hildred Clifford. The thing is

beyond a doubt. Young Franklyn, we are positively told, is long since

dead. Therefore Willie is at liberty, and I say, bound, to marry the

girl he loves, and who loves him. That's clear enough.'

'You think so, Janet?' said her brother thoughtfully.

'To be sure I do. The thing is as plain as a pike-staff.'

'I wish I could be as sure of it as you are.'

'Why, it's common sense. Willie will see it himself, and make up his

mind, now that it is put before him properly--that is, if he is as

sensible as he ought to be after the learning he got from you.'

'But I haven't made up my own mind,' said my dear old master.

'Brother, I am surprised at you. What would you have? You can't keep

faith with a dead man, and I'm sure he wouldn't wish it himself.

Cuthbert Franklyn was an open-hearted generous lad, when I remember

him, and would have been the last to stand in the way of Willie's

welfare. No, Willie's present duty is to make little Hildred Clifford

happy, not to keep a fanciful promise that had much better never have

been made at all.'

'I protest I think Janet is right,' said Master Caleb. 'I do indeed.

The more I think of it the more sensible it seems.'

They went on strengthening each other in the opinion they had formed,

while I listened with a beating heart, hearing Mrs. Janet assert, and

my master agree with her, that it was my bounden duty to set aside the

past. The turning of the tide had come at length.

I looked towards Dorothy, sitting somewhat apart beside the fire. She

had not spoken, but once or twice had raised her eyes quickly from her

work. Latterly she had laid it down on her lap, as if to listen more

carefully, and was looking thoughtfully from one to the other as they

spoke. Master Caleb followed the direction of my eyes.

'Do you want to know what she thinks?' he said, brightening up.

'If she would be so kind.'

'Dorothy,' he called. She came nearer and laid her hand on his

shoulder. 'Willie wants your advice, and your help Dorothy.'

She hesitated a little, and looked at Mrs. Janet, who nodded to her,

and said--

'Well, speak up child!'

'But Janet must know so much better than I do,' Dorothy began.

'Bless me!' Mrs. Janet broke in. 'Why, you are not going to say

Dorothy, child, that you don't think of it as I do.'

'I thought,' Dorothy began again, and then stopped.

'There can be no two ways about it,' said Mrs. Janet, knitting faster.

'Go on, Dorothy,' said her husband watching her.

'I don't like seeming to set myself up against Janet,' she said, with

her frank smile.

'Is that all?' Mrs. Janet patted her shoulder. 'Always know your mind,

my dear, and speak it. I am going into the window to turn the heel of

my stocking, and I shan't hear you. So say your say, child, and don't

think of me--not that there can be two ways about it, all the same, you

know.'

Dorothy turned round to me quickly. 'You want to know what I think?'

I said if she pleased I did indeed.

'Then, Willie, remember Cuthbert's trust in you, remember your promise,

and help Hildred to keep hers.'

There was a short silence.

'You know there is every reason to believe Cuthbert Franklyn to be

dead,' said Master Caleb, in a low voice.

'I know it; we cannot tell. It may be so--God alone knows. That

question is in His hands not ours. But is Willie set free from the

solemn word he gave? Can he marry Hildred now, and yet feel that he is

faithful to the trust he took upon him, and true to the friend who left

all he cared for, without a fear, in his keeping? Willie,' she went on,

'it is very hard for you, a long hard trial and a rough path may lie

before you. It may be also that in this world you will never see that

you were right. Perhaps at the close of your life you will say, "Well,

all these years I might have been happy, and only for a doubt I have

been lonely all my life." But I think even then you will not grudge the

long struggle or the lonely years, and that you will draw near to your

end more peacefully, for having tried to do your duty to the uttermost

and to be "faithful unto death."'

I bent my head down lower and lower as she spoke. I was ashamed to

raise it up. Her words had swept away the mists that had seemed to be

rising round me and confusing me. The right was growing clear once

more. The bright haze that had dazzled my weak eyes was passing away,

and my duty stood stern and plain again before me.

I could not speak, but stood before her with my eyes bent on the ground.

'It was for Hildred's sake he doubted,' said my kind master, almost

pleadingly.

'I know it,' she answered very softly. 'I know it was; but Hildred

will be glad too, some day, that Willie has guarded her even against

herself. He must find strength for her also. It seems to me that there

could be for them no true content or rest, for the shadow of a trust

betrayed and of a broken word would stand between them, and day by day

the cloud of a fear they would not dare to speak of would darken over

their lives.'

There was silence all through the room. No one answered. My master

still sat half-turned and looking up at her. Mrs. Janet had left the

window and was facing us. Her hands were held in the attitude of

knitting, but the needles did not move, nor did she try to speak. I saw

them all without knowing that I looked. At last Mistress Dorothy spoke

again.

'Willie,' she said--the colour had flushed into her face, and its

earnestness made her beautiful to look at--'Willie, not to every one is

granted the opportunity of a great self-sacrifice. If God has willed

that your path should be very difficult, do not be afraid to walk in

it, for He will surely help you. Do not think so much of what you

_may_ do, as of what you _can_ do--of what you can give up at

His call. Choose the highest, for it will lead you nearer to Him. I am

a weak woman. I know I should not be strong enough to walk in your hard

path; but Willie'--she came near to me and took my hand,--'hitherto you

have been so noble and so true. Brave heart, be faithful to the end.'

The kind words, so unlooked for, so undeserved, came too suddenly upon

me. I had so nearly failed, and she said this. I kissed her hand--

When I looked up again, the tears were raining down her face, Master

Caleb's eyes were shaded by his hand, and Mrs. Janet was in the window,

standing with her back to us.

* * * * *

They say that to every cloud there is a silver lining. I was very sure

that there were clouds on my horizon, but not quite so certain about

the silver lining. If there was one at all, it must have been Jock

Clifford.

For when you are in trouble there is a great deal of comfort to be got

out of a child's affection.

In those days, after Matt Clifford had received my answer to his

question in cold silence--when Martha would not let Hildred go near

our house, and had forbidden her, as nearly as she could, to speak to

me--when my father never opened his lips but to complain of me, I fell

back with a singular feeling of refreshment and consolation, on my one

staunch friend Jock.

He had been my shadow ever since, some nine or ten years ago, he began

to stand alone on his sturdy little legs. Robin and Walter, his twin

elder brothers, had no time to notice him. They were absorbed in a

never-ending struggle, which of them should have the upper hand--a

struggle that had begun as long ago as when, two red-faced babies, they

lay heads and tails in the same cradle. It never seemed likely to be

settled in their life-time, and it made them very quarrelsome, and

quite inseparable.

So Jock, left to himself, bestowed all his company upon me. When one is

in disgrace with well nigh all the world--and very few people made up

'all the world' to me,--it is at all events something to have a friend

left, in whose eyes the idea of your doing anything wrong is a matter

of simple impossibility--it is something, even though the friend be

only eleven years old.

Jock was no half-hearted champion. He had found that he could make his

mother pinch up her lips and raise her eyebrows, merely by praising me.

So he talked of me incessantly, partly for love of me, and partly to

use this his newly-gotten power. He was somewhat pleased too, only half

offended, at Aunt Hildred frequently giving him kisses and lumps of

barley sugar, behind the door.

Knowing that I was not very welcome to any one else, I fell, in my

down-heartedness, rather an easy prey to Jock's overflowing life and

glee, and he led me hither and thither, that spring, pretty nearly

as he would. Neither work nor play came amiss to him. Ratting,

rook-shooting and rabbit-snaring Jock's soul delighted in--most of all,

perhaps, helping me to fish the trout stream that ran under the Castle

walls.

No wonder he liked it. My own troubles seemed to fade away, as I laid

the line lightly across the stream. Ah, those spring days, when the

'March brown' was on the water, how fair they were! A bluff wind came

singing up the valley, crisping the clear brown water and crowning each

little wave with silver ripples; a soft pearly sky, with now and then

a dash of pale spring sunshine that lighted up woods and stream, and

showed how the red buds were bursting into leaf, and a tender shining

green, was beginning to clothe the alder trees.

My eyes, and Jock's, were fastened on to the water. I felt, rather than

saw, that spring's soft fingers were at work along the banks; that a

tuft of starry primroses had been nestled into the mossy root of an old

willow, and a yellow butterfly, the first of the year, hung fluttering

over them. Farther on a whole bed of violets, purple and white,

glittered, fragrance-breathing, on the bank. The wind swept through

the boughs merrily, trying in play to tear off the new leaves; but the

stout little things held fast and laughed back, as they were swayed up

and down. The whole bright summer was theirs to flutter through, before

the wind could claim them as his own; and the birds and the wind and

the sunshine spoke with their hundred tongues, and said, 'Ah, poor

mortals! you may fret, and dispute, and sorrow as you will; you cannot

keep back the summer. It is coming. It is coming.'

One day that spring I was bidden to a wedding at the Ferry-house; and I

went, rejoicing heartily for both bride and bridegroom's sake. If ever

I saw a face that beamed with contentment it was the bridegroom's.

Patience--his best helper--had won the day for him, and Elfrida wedded

her faithful suitor at last.

For David Moore had come home for good, cured of his love of wandering

and fighting, and well pleased to settle down for the rest of his days

at the ferry.

The old people Elfrida had worked for so long wanted her no more.

Davy--well, if it be true that clouds have silver linings it is not

less so that each rose has its thorn. I thought of that on the wedding

day, when the moment came for Elfrida to part with Davy. She was as

quiet as usual until then, waiting upon everybody, and looking as if

nothing had happened. But when the horse with the pillion on it, stood

ready to carry her 'home,' Elfrida's heart gave way. She knelt on the

ground, hugging Davy to her, kissing his curls, his frock, his little

restless hands. Her husband stood waiting for her, compassionate and a

little impatient. Davy himself had one arm round her neck, but his eyes

were wandering to the horse, and he was eager to see Elfrida ride away.

'Oh Baby,' she sobbed, going back in her distress to the first name she

had loved him by; 'Won't Baby kiss poor Frida?'

Davy looked at her, wondering. He had never seen her cry before.

He put the other arm round her neck and kissed her gravely on each

cheek. Immediately afterwards he gave her up as a bad job, being quite

unable to fathom such a depth of grief as two kisses from him were not

sufficient to cure.

That would be the way with him all his days. He was made, in his

careless beauty, to win hearts without trying, to be loved and

worshipped and wept over. There would always be plenty of Elfridas

thankful to work for him in the shadow, while he walked through life in

the sunshine.

But now her willing slavery was ending. The last words were spoken. The

old shoe was thrown after her for luck. The setting sun was turning the

river--her old comrade--into a sheet of gold.

Elfrida rode away up into the hills behind her goodman, and the

ferry-boat knew her no more.

'Life,' said Martha Clifford musingly, 'is a muddle. Births and

deaths--comings and goings--weddings and funerals--the young marry and

the old die; that's the way of the world.'

She was standing by my father's bedside as she reflected thus.

Elfrida's was the wedding that was just past; my father's the death

that it seemed would follow hard upon it.

He had been failing all the winter; but now we counted his remaining

life by days, nay, it might be, by hours. Martha had softened towards

me since he was 'taken,' as she called it, 'for death.' Both she and

Hildred helped to tend him.

And it came about that, before my father died, even the cause of

difference that had been between us was taken away.

It was but natural that they should blame me for still clinging to such

a mere shadow as the hope that Cuthbert might be alive. But I thought

that it must be God Himself who kept alight in my heart the little

spark of faith that no one shared, and that would not be extinguished.

Now I know that it was so.

For I was right after all. At last--at last, he came. One evening,

after Martha and Hildred had gone home and I was alone downstairs,

I heard the latch move as if some one was trying to lift it with an

unsteady hand. Then the door opened, and the sunshine and the shadow

fell across the floor--a man's shadow. I looked round carelessly, for

I was not thinking of him then. Other cares--my father's illness and

Hildred's presence, had driven him lately out of my mind. He had not

been so far from my thoughts for years as lately, when day by day he

was coming nearer to me.

Now, as I was telling you, I saw a shadow cast from the doorway.

I turned round. There, on the threshold stood a soldier in a worn

greatcoat--a dark man, with the empty sleeve of his right arm fastened

across his breast. As I got up, he took off his hat and spoke my name.

How did we meet? I cannot tell. What words does one use after such a

parting? How can you greet one, come back, as it were, through the

grave and gate of death? I only remember hearing myself say over and

over again, 'Cuthbert, Cuthbert.'

'You thought that I was dead.' His voice deep and grave, was as the

voice of a stranger.

'Never; I could not believe it; others might, I never did.'

'Faithful old Willie.' He smiled, and then it was Cuthbert again.

I wanted to push him down into the arm-chair in the chimney-corner, and

tried to welcome him in such broken words as I could find.

Was it very strange that, in the quick rush of joy at seeing his face

once more, I forgot Hildred for a moment--forgot all but that my

brother had come home? His next words brought all back. He put his hand

on my shoulder and said 'Hildred?' and I felt his grasp tighten as if

he tried to steady himself.

'She is at home, and well.'

He drew a long breath without speaking, and my words too were checked.

'I am going to her,' he said next.

'Oh Cuthbert, stop--remember. She knows nothing, she has long given you

up. It will kill her if you come upon her suddenly.'

Cuthbert pushed away my hand with a smile. 'Joy does not kill,' he said.

Joy! I do not know which I thought of at that moment, joy or sorrow,

Cuthbert or Hildred, the sudden shock of their meeting to her, or the

blow it might bring to him.

'Let me go to her first,' I said eagerly: 'let me tell her.' I do not

know what I meant to do. I think I had some wild idea of imploring her

to love him.

Cuthbert looked surprised. 'No, no,' he said, 'I want to see her first

glad look. Don't keep me.'

I suppose in my perturbation I was going to follow him, for he stopped

and said, 'Let me go alone, Will. Dear old fellow, I don't want even

you when I first see my Hildred.'

I let him go--let him go to her whom he called his own. He was

right--his, not mine. And I had been so madly glad to see him!

Cuthbert was not gone for very long. He came in slowly, came up to me,

and--he had not done it since we were little boys together--bent down

and kissed me. My heart was beating hard and fast.

'You have seen her?'

'Yes'--he sank down wearily into a chair--'I have seen her.'

'Well?'

'Well'--he looked up and smiled rather sadly--'Well, the joy did not

kill her, you see.'

'She was glad?'

'I hope so. I hope so indeed.'

'What then, Cuthbert? Did she know you?'

He leant down his head on the table, and suddenly burst into tears. My

whole heart went back to him.

'Cuthbert--what is it?'

He spoke almost directly. 'I am a worn-out old soldier. I have lost my

arm. I am good for nothing now, and I think she was disappointed in me.'

Oh Cuthbert, whom in my heart I had almost hated just now--true

soldier, faithful heart--to see his brave head bent low. He should be

happy whatever became of me.

I told him to be comforted, that all would be well, and by-and-by he

began to believe what he so much wished. 'I have looked forward to this

for so long,' he said. 'I have had so much hardship and suffering. For

two years we were in an Indian prison, and I should not have cared to

live, only for the thought that Hildred would grieve for me. And now to

see her so changed, so white and strange.'

'You frightened her, poor child. Remember that she had long given up

the hope of seeing you again.'

'You had not.'

'Ah, Cuthbert, that was so different.'

He gave a long sigh. 'Perhaps I had better not have come back at all.

I had better not have lived.'

'But you must live now, for your little Hildred's sake.' I could say it

with no sharp pang at my heart. A great peacefulness came over me, like

the evening air after a storm. That night, as I sat up alone beside

my father's bed, I prayed for Cuthbert and Hildred. For myself I only

needed to thank God for His mercy to me.

It was scarcely light the next morning when Jock's low whistle under

the window called me out to him. Hildred had sent him, he said, to tell

me to go and speak to her. She was in the chapel, waiting for me.

Day had not long broken outside. Inside the ruined aisle of the chapel

was full of shadows still, but through the great window facing the

east we could see the dawn brighten and grow strong. Hildred had

chosen a strange place of meeting. Here all told how earthly joy and

earthly sorrow vanish and pass away. Beneath our feet, as we trod the

broken pavement, were the graves of men whose hopes and fears had long

been over; their very names were worn away by the footsteps of later

generations. Deep and unbroken seemed the repose of the happy dead.

What matter now to them how heavy the cross had been, so that they had

won the crown? What matter how hard and long the battle had been once,

so that they had been faithful unto death? A thrill of awe crossed me

as I looked up the solemn aisle in the grey morning light. There too

the sculptured angel that in my childhood I used to call my mother,

looked down gravely with outstretched wings, as if she were watching

over her son in this the crisis of his life.

Hildred was there, leaning against an old carved tomb. She was quite

white, and her eyes had a scared and weary look as she raised them to

me.

I am afraid that I spoke the more sternly, for the love I felt for her,

the great longing I had to take her to my heart and comfort her.

'Well, Hildred,' I said, gravely, 'you sent for me.'

'I was so frightened,' she whispered. 'Oh Willie, tell me what I ought

to do.'

'Your duty.'

Just as she used to do when she was a child, she covered her face and

shrank down on to the ground.

'But it is so hard to do one's duty--so hard.'

'Oh child,' I answered, from my heart, 'it is hard, but God is good.'

Then I tried to plead Cuthbert's cause, and to tell her how the

remembrance of her had been the one thing he clung to through his dark

days of imprisonment and pain--the one thing, failing which he would

have been glad, for very weariness, to lie down and die.

'If we have failed him--you and I--in these years that he has trusted

us--and in my heart I know that I have failed in deed, if not in

will--oh Hildred, it is not too late yet. We have time, and Cuthbert

trusts us still.'

'You never think of anyone but Cuthbert,' said Hildred, impatiently,

unknowing how cruel her words sounded.

'I think of you too, Hildred,' I answered, very sadly. 'I am very sorry

for you both.'

'Would Cuthbert mind so very much,' asked Hildred, 'if he knew how long

it was before we gave him up?'

'You will never tell him you forgot him,' I said, in terror.

She was silent.

'God help him, then. God help us all.'

Neither of us spoke for many minutes--slow minutes that were laden with

heavy thoughts.

At last Hildred looked up to me with a smile that was wonderfully sweet

and sad.

'Willie,' she said, 'I wish I could be as strong as you are.'

'You can, Hildred. Oh dear Hildred, you will be if you try.'

'Oh, I am going to try, of course,' she answered, wearily.

Cuthbert was standing before the door when I went home. We shook hands

and went into the house together, but I had a strange feeling all the

time, that I did not know what to say to him. Last night I fancied that

my battle was all over, and the victory mine once and for ever. This

morning it all began over again, and every word that Cuthbert spoke

ruffled me. I felt angry with him for speaking cheerily, and gave all

my attention to lighting the fire. He stood leaning his arm on the

chimney-piece, and watching me.

'It seems odd to see you doing all the woman's work,' he said.

I answered shortly that there was no one else to do it.

'So dear old Granny is gone?'

'Yes, long ago.'

'How long?'

'Oh, two years and more.'

'Dear, kind old Granny. She was very good to me.'

I said nothing.

'Do you think your father is getting better?' he asked presently.

'No, I don't. He never will be better.'

Cuthbert looked down at me in his old kind way.

'Poor old Will, you have had troubles even here at home.'

'Yes, one doesn't need to go to the wars for that,' I answered.

'And yet I fancied you all so happy here, except that I thought Hildred

must fret about me at times. Did she, Will?'

'Of course. Everybody was uneasy about you.'

And then I was glad to get away to my father's room. But when I came

down Cuthbert would talk of Hildred, and ask questions about her. He

seemed to have forgotten the fears he had last night. She had been

startled, he said, but it would be all right to-day. And by-and-by he

went away to seek her.

The day passed slowly and heavily. My father lay with his eyes half

closed, scarcely noticing anything. I did not let Cuthbert see him,

for fear of disturbing him, but later in the day, when Hildred and

Martha were with him, he heard the strange footstep on the stairs.

Cuthbert's step now, soldierly and measured, was very unlike the light

quick tread my father used to know. It was no remembrance that made him

turn his head on the pillow to listen, and then say to Hildred, 'Who?'

I tried to turn his attention away, but the footstep crossed the room

below, and my father repeated, 'Who is it?'

'Cuthbert Franklyn,' Hildred said, quietly.

'Cuthbert!' There was very little surprise in his voice as he repeated

the name. 'Cuthbert! Bring him here.'

I went outside the room and called him. I was sorry my father should

find out that Cuthbert was there, but I saw in a few minutes that it

mattered very little. The small interests of Time, its lights and

shadows, were growing faint and dim for the eyes on which Eternity was

just about to dawn.

My father held out his hand feebly when Cuthbert stood beside his

bed. After a minute he looked up at him again, and murmured a few

words, too low for any of us to catch distinctly. I believe they were

something about fishing, and that his thoughts were wandering back to

when Cuthbert was a boy. He did not need an answer. In a few minutes he

was lying quietly as before.

Cuthbert stood for a while at the foot of the bed and then went away.

It made me feel more than ever that I was alone. My father had cared so

much about my marrying Hildred; and now Cuthbert's return, which put an

end to that thought for ever, awoke no interest in him. He was neither

surprised nor sorry that Cuthbert and Hildred should have been standing

together beside his bed.

Hildred was very quiet. She waited on my father with careful

tenderness, and avoided as much as she could speaking to me. When she

had done everything for my father, she stood still for a long while

looking down at him. Perhaps, like me, she half-envied him his peaceful

rest.

Nearly everybody in the village came up in the course of the day to

see Cuthbert. The news of his return had spread far and wide, and his

old friends thronged to welcome him, hardly able to believe that he

was really the Cuthbert Franklyn they had so long talked of as dead.

Everybody wished me joy.

'I'm sure I'm as glad as though it had been a son of my own,' said good

old Esther Reynolds. 'I knew how you'd feel, Willie, let alone Hildred.

Just at this time too, it seems sent to cheer you up a bit, now your

father lies so ill. I said so when I heard the news, and that I must

make shift to get up to the Castle and tell Willie Lisle how I thought

about him; for, as I said to my master, the two boys were wonderful

fond of each other--more than most real brothers. Now there are my two

lads, quarrelled at the fair last Michaelmas, and haven't so much as

spoken one to the t'other since.'

Cuthbert looked at me and I at him, and we held out our hands to each

other. Everybody was shaking hands and we were not noticed. As I felt

his strong left-handed grasp, something that was like a cloud seemed to

roll away from between us.

'It's all right now, old chap,' he said, low enough for no one but me

to hear.

So it was 'all right' from that time forth between him and me. But he

began by degrees to see that Hildred was changed, and that his fancy

the night he had come home was no mistake.

He was very patient and gentle to her, even when she was the most

changeable or cold. He never complained; only he often sat still

without speaking, with a sad look on his face.

'I must give her time,' he said to me once or twice. 'It will come

right by-and-by. I have grown strange to her. Will, I sometimes think

this is a judgment on me for the selfish way I went and left her when I

first enlisted.'

'You must wait,' I used to say.

'Oh yes, I will; I am trying to be very patient, and I believe that she

will come back to me in time.'

I don't think he ever really doubted that. His trust in her, like his

love for her, was perfect.

My father's state was reason enough for settling nothing. We all felt

it to be a time of waiting. For myself, I looked forward very little.

A merciful kind of lull and calmness had come across my life, as I

watched over my father's last days.

He died as silently as he had lived. I had wished for some spoken

word to tell me he was happy, and that the hand of the Good Shepherd

was guiding him through the valley of the shadow of death. But it was

not so to be. An upward look; a clasping of the hands; a deep 'Amen,'

uttered at the end of the prayers the vicar offered by his bed; a

smile when the most comforting of all names was spoken to him. Those

were the outward signs he gave.

For the rest, who can tell what was passing in his mind during those

silent nights and days?

The end came towards morning, after a night of storm and rain. The wind

was shaking the lattice windows and moaning round the ruins. We were

all gathered about his bed--Cuthbert and I, Matt Clifford and his wife,

and Hildred. When, towards midnight, the strange change that even those

who have seen little of death know instinctively, began to come across

his face Cuthbert went to fetch them. Everyone was quite quiet except

poor Hildred. She could not keep back her sobs, as she knelt with her

face hidden on the side of the bed.

I saw Cuthbert move round, and without speaking put his hand on her

bowed head.

All seemed unreal and far away to me, except my father's overshadowed

face and deep-drawn breath. 'He does not know anything,' said Martha

Clifford, watching him.

But as if he somehow felt the coming of the morning, he stirred and

opened his eyes, and in a thick indistinct voice he asked the hour.

I bent over and told him.

The next moment he said, 'Is it day-break?'

No, it was still quite dark; but a new, bright unearthly smile came

over his face. With a thrill of awe and wonder we looked to see it

fade----

'It is over,' Martha Clifford said.

And the smile remained.

* * * * *

A few days more, and the slow tolling of the church bell called us to

go down and lay our dead under the shadow of the grey belfry.

My father's burial was over, and we had come back to the empty house.

All that afternoon I sat by the fire-place in his vacant chair, and

tried to think of what I ought to do.

The house was quite silent, and the door, as usual in summer, stood

half open.

Somehow I fell to thinking of my mother more than of my father. It was

just on such a quiet afternoon as this that I came home years ago,

after she was dead, and found Cuthbert near the well. I thought of the

message Master Caleb brought me from her, bidding me be as a brother to

Cuthbert, and I wondered whether she would still have sent it, if she

could have known all that was to follow. What would she have had me do

now? The way did not seem clear before me. All my kith and kin were

gone. I had seen them carried one by one across the threshold, and had

stood by while they were laid to rest in the churchyard down yonder.

Mother first; then the kind old grandmother, and now my father. I was

as much alone as Cuthbert was when he first came to us. The wheel of

life had turned round since then, and left me poor.

Cuthbert stayed with me for some time, sitting in the chair opposite

to mine, and trying every now and then, poor fellow, to find something

cheering to say to me. But I did not care to talk, so at last he went

to the door and let in more sunshine as he pushed it open; then he

came back to me, and after putting his hand on my shoulder and saying

something about going to look for Hildred he went away.

I was glad to be left alone, though Cuthbert was grave and sad enough,

and almost as ready to sit silently thinking as I was. He and my father

had never been much to each other. Yet it was the breaking of a long

tie, and the losing of the last bit of the old life. Besides, he was

unhappy about Hildred.

I suppose a long time passed while I still sat thinking, for the sun

came round to the other window, and cast long level rays into the room.

Suddenly a great noise roused me--a loud crash and then a rumbling

sound, as if loose stones were falling over one another. Once before I

had heard something like it when a part of the Castle wall had fallen.

I went out quickly now, towards the part of the ruin that the sound

came from.

Hildred met me as I passed under the arch near the keep. She was as

pale as death. She clutched my arm and tried to speak. I could barely

hear what she said, for some horror seemed to be choking her, and she

gasped for breath. She pulled me back in the direction from which she

came.

'I have killed him. Come!'

'Hildred what is it? Where is Cuthbert?'

She pointed across the ruins. Still in the same hoarse whisper she

said, 'The tower fell in; I took him there.'

It was true; part of the tower had fallen. It was the oldest bit of the

ruin, and the walls were mouldering away. I had often warned Hildred

that it was unsafe. Now I saw a great heap of massive fallen stones and

masonry, and a huge gap in the wall. A bit of the winding stone stair

was down. Far above our heads the broken steps began again. Merciful

Heaven! was Cuthbert buried under all that?

'Can he be alive?' Hildred gasped, and ended with a long wild scream,

as she saw the horror in my face.

'Hush, Hildred, I must get the tools; call Matt; send the boys for

help.'

When I came back Matt Clifford was there. Hildred had flung herself

down upon the fallen stones and was tearing at the rough masses with

her bare hands.

Poor child! I must tell you now, what I heard afterwards, why she said

that she had done it. I did not ask then, only worked for dear life,

and spoke no words, except a few which I will tell you later.

Cuthbert had found her when he left me. She was thinking of my father,

and her heart, she said, was full of longing to come and comfort me in

my trouble. 'It seemed hardest of all not to be able to tell you how

sorry I was. Your father was always so good to me.'

So when Cuthbert joined her she was cross with him, and reproached

him for having left me alone at such a time. He was very gentle and

patient, but she would not listen. They wandered on as they talked,

and came to this tower. Hildred wanted to get away from him, and

began to climb the winding stair, bidding him not follow her. Half

way up there was a broken window, out of which we often used to jump

as children, on to the wall beneath. She reached this in safety,

but Cuthbert had come after her; turning round she saw the stair

waver beneath his greater weight. The wall rocked to and fro--bent

inwards--and then came the awful crash which I had heard, and Cuthbert

was gone.

I knew it was useless, yet I could not help bending down and calling

out his name. No answer. A dead silence there, but behind, the welcome

sound of hurrying steps, as man after man came up to us, breathless,

horror-stricken, eager to help.

We fell to work, working as men only can when life or death seems

hanging on their hands. Scarcely a word was uttered. There was only the

sound of the pickaxes driven deep down into the heaps of rubbish,--the

grating noise of stones raised up and thrown aside--by-and-by the

quickened breathing of those who would not stop to rest. On and on,

with a grim energy, and agony of suspense, that seemed to double the

power in those strong arms and quivering muscles. On and on, with

wild words of voiceless prayer ringing in my ears, with thoughts that

wandered strangely to my father's funeral, to the tolling of the church

bell, to Hildred standing sobbing by the open grave.

She was close beside me. Her hands were torn and bleeding, cut by the

sharp stones which she was trying madly to lift up and roll away. The

gravel that the spades threw aside, fell all over her, but she did not

know it. I lifted her up, for there was not room enough for all the

workers, who could give stronger help than hers. She struggled to get

away from me, telling me to let her go back and help.

'You cannot help us so,' I said. 'Hildred! poor child, kneel down and

pray for us.'

'Oh, I cannot. I do not know how. I am too wicked. Tell me what to say.'

Somehow, the solemn words that we had heard that day, standing by my

father's grave, came to my lips, and I repeated them.

'In the midst of life we are in death. Of whom may we seek for succour

but of Thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?'

Hildred had fallen on her knees, repeating 'Oh, justly displeased, most

justly.'

I was back at work. I heard Hildred say, 'Won't some one pray again?'

and presently an old man, the parish clerk, standing near her, said in

a broken voice, with many pauses, 'In all time of our tribulation, in

the hour of death, and in the day of judgment----'

From us all--from poor Hildred--from the eager workers, and the

watchers standing by, came as with one voice, the deep response, 'Good

Lord, deliver us.'

The time was drawing near when we should know the worst. The great heap

of fallen masonry was getting smaller every minute. Could Cuthbert have

been saved alive? We came upon great stems of ivy crushed and broken in

the ruin. The fresh leaves, unwithered yet, shone out strangely here

and there.

Hildred had not moved. She was kneeling, almost lying on the ground.

The setting sun was shining in our eyes, dazzling us as we worked, with

what seemed to me--calm, pitiless curiosity.

A great stone, almost the last, was lifted on one side. From those

in front there suddenly rose a sort of cheer, checked instantly, a

smothered exclamation, and then an eager silence, as they bent over

something on the ground.

I gave one look, went back to Hildred, and knelt down by her. I burst

out crying like a child when I began to speak. I could not help it.

Then I took her hand and told her, 'Hildred, dear heart, be comforted.

There is hope.'

He was not crushed. God had guarded him. He had fallen in some manner

sheltered from the great stones, by the wall and the remains of the

staircase. He was half buried under the bits of broken wall, and he lay

quite still and unconscious at our feet. But he might be living yet. We

carried him out, and laid him down in the sunshine.

Was it life or death--that rigid figure that did not move, that

ashen-grey face, with the thin stream of blood trickling from the

temple?

Hildred was on the ground beside him, gazing into his face with

straining eyes, that seemed as if they must call him back from death

itself. She lifted up his arm and tried to put it round her. She called

to him, first in a choked whisper, then louder, yet louder, as his

silence struck the chill of terror more into her heart.

'Cuthbert, Cuthbert! Oh come back! Forgive me! Dear Cuthbert, speak to

me!'

The men stood round watching her. I heard some of them crying, great

rough fellows as they were. Hildred looked up at me with bright,

widely-opened eyes--no tears in them. Then she spoke to him again,

called on him to come back, and she would love him. He heard her. Some

tone of hers must have reached him even then. He moved, drew a faint

sigh. Oh the low cry she gave! It was not a word or a sob, but just the

half-stifled first cry of a new-born hope.

And then Cuthbert opened his eyes, saw her leaning over him, and

smiled. She did not speak, only bent down lower, until her face lay

hidden by her hands upon his breast.

In a few minutes, very slowly and feebly he raised his hand and put it

on her head.

Cuthbert was taken to Clifford's house, which was much nearer at hand

than ours. For a few hours more we watched him anxiously. Life came

back slowly, but at length the doctor turned away from the bed with

a sigh of relief. 'He will do now,' he said cheerily. 'Only keep him

quiet. Why, it would never have done to let him slip through our

fingers in this sort of way, after his getting over his wounds and

escaping out of that Indian prison, as they tell me he did.'

By the next day he could speak to us in a weak voice, and had revived

enough to smile a little when Martha told him he had got no more than

he deserved, for mooning about in places where Jock himself knew better

than to venture.

Towards evening I left him comfortably asleep. Hildred followed me

out of the porch, and closed the house door behind her. For a few

minutes we did not speak, but stood looking at the setting sun, and

thinking--at least I thought--with what different eyes we had seen it

going down yesterday, not less peacefully than to-day.

Hildred spoke first, lifting her eyes to mine with a grave rested look

that it was new to me to see upon her face.

'God has been merciful,' she said.

'Most merciful.'

'And now----'

My heart was beating fast and heavily. In her grief, in her great

terror and her self-reproach, she had seemed to grow dearer to me than

ever before; and now that the moment had come--I knew it had--when I

must really give her up, I felt as if I could not part with her.

'And now, Willie, I must try to be good at last.' She stopped for a

moment, and clasped her hands. 'In that most dreadful time last night,

when you told me to pray--when you and the men were working, and I did

not know whether or not I had killed him, I made a promise, a solemn

promise before God. You know what it was.'

I nodded.

'God gave me back Cuthbert's life. I must try to make it a happy life.

I must redeem my promise. Willie, you will help me?'

And so the battle--the hard struggle--was over for her. Well, it was

far better so. She was not strong, my darling; she could not have borne

a long battle such as a man must fight, so God led her by a short sharp

road back to peace.

For a short time we stood together still. Then Hildred turned slowly.

'And now, Willie, just once before I go, I want you to say God bless

you.'

As she stood before me looking up at me, I put my hand upon her head,

and said, as steadily as I could, 'God bless my dear love for ever, and

make her happy.'

The tears were streaming down her face, not bitter tears, but quietly

sorrowful. And as I ended she clasped her dear arms for a moment

lightly round my neck, and kissed me. That was our farewell. We said

no more, and Hildred went away. I watched her until the door closed

behind her. When she shut it, the Hildred I loved and who loved me, had

passed away from my sight and from my life.

I do not mean that I did not see her, for she was often there when

I went to Cuthbert, and after a few days she came with him to the

Gatehouse.

Those days, the first of a good many that I had spent quite alone, gave

me time to think over many things. My duty began to grow plain to me.

Hildred had asked me to help her. I was growing to see more clearly how

I could best do so.

Cuthbert got better very quickly. He too, I believe, was thinking a

great deal just then of what his future life should be. Hitherto he had

been too sad and anxious to make plans, but now that Hildred seemed to

have come back to him, he began to wonder how they were to live. He

told me so once, when I was sitting by his bed, saying that he would

not let it trouble him just yet, he was too happy. Still, he could not

help remembering that his pension was very small, and that he had not

got two arms like other people. 'I wonder if I can earn enough for

Hildred with one arm,' he said. 'Do advise me, Will.'

I asked him to let the future rest for a little longer, and he was

content to do so, being weak still, as well as very happy.

In a few days he could walk about again, and one evening he and Hildred

came across the ruins and sat down to rest on the old stone bench

outside our house. I remember every little thing that happened on

that evening, so like, and yet so unlike, any other that I have ever

spent. I could almost repeat each word that was said, every-day and

purposeless as some of them would have appeared to any one but me.

I felt as if they must guess my secret, when I asked Cuthbert to come

home to-morrow and to look after the house and the Castle gate, while I

was away.

'Going away!' said Hildred, looking up.

I was obliged to go to Morechester, I told them, to see the man of

business who managed everything about the Castle. He must be told of my

father's death, and would settle who was to come after him. Long ago it

had been promised that I should do so.

'So it's sure to be all right,' said Cuthbert.

'Oh yes, all right.'

Cuthbert was the one of us who talked the most. He went on to say how

like old times it was, for us three to be there together. Neither

Hildred nor I made much answer, and presently, following the train of

his own thoughts, he began to tell us about his soldier life, his last

battle, the dreary years of his imprisonment, and then his escape.

I was glad, and so I think was Hildred, to sit silent and hear him

talk. I can see her now, listening quietly and gravely, with her hands

folded on her lap. I like to remember her in my mother's place. Often

since, I have fancied her sitting there.

The twilight drew on. Now and then a bee, heavily laden, went droning

past. The sound of the river rippling over the stones below came to us

more clearly. One star shone out. We had been sitting without talking

for some time, and Hildred said they must go home.

'I shall be gone before you are awake in the morning,' I said. 'I will

leave the key for you.'

They bade me good-night, and went away together.

Cuthbert turned, I have often wondered why, after he had gone a few

steps, and came back to wring my hand again. 'Good-night, Will,' he

repeated. 'I'll take good care of the old place while you're away. Good

speed to you on your journey.'

The words sounded to me like a farewell. 'Will you promise to stay

until I come back?' I said, still holding his hand. And he answered,

laughing, 'Of course.'

I watched them crossing the Castle Court. Cuthbert was leaning on

Hildred. She walked slowly and carefully. Once or twice he bent his

head down to talk to her, and I saw her look up to answer him. As they

went on she put her hand up to his, which was on her shoulder, as if

she told him to lean on her more heavily.

So I lost sight of them in the twilight. God bless them both! It was

many years before I saw either of them again.

Later at night, when the moon was up, I went all over the ruins. The

grey towers were whitened by the moon-beams, and draped in black ivy,

with here and there a silver leaf that the light had fallen upon. From

the deep shadow cast by the walls and towers, I passed into the full

stream of colourless radiance, then back again into darkness.

For many minutes I stood under Hildred's window, against the

diamond-shaped panes of which the moon was glittering. 'Sleep

peacefully dear love,' I said to her in my heart. 'Wake happily. God

give you bright dreams and gladsome days for ever.'

Lastly, I came to the well, and leaning over the edge looked down

wearily. There was the reflection of one sparkling star down there,

that lay quivering on the black water. I cannot tell how long I stayed

thus; for then I began to lose myself.

The rest of that night, the morrow, and many of the days that followed,

are almost a blank in my memory--a blank from which some few pictures

stand out more or less distinctly.

I see myself standing before sunrise on the bridge, and turning to

take a long last look at the old home. A dewy misty morning had come

after the moonlight night. By-and-by it would brighten into a cloudless

summer's day; but now the mist hung in heavy folds over the Castle. For

an instant the morning breeze might blow it aside and show a glimpse of

ruined wall and towered gateway, but the next the white curtain floated

back again, and all was hidden.

In the strange confusion that was coming over my thoughts it seemed to

me as if those fleecy wreaths of mist were rolling over my whole life,

and covering up the past from me for ever.

Next I see Morechester, with burning sunlight blazing on the

market-place, and church bells sending abroad their golden waves of

sound. Suddenly the glare is quenched as I pass under the arched

doorway into the Minster. The air strikes chill, there is a great

dimness and silence. From the other end of the nave come echoes as of

closing gates and distant footsteps, and presently voices are singing.

There is an iron gate which I try to open, but it is locked, and red

light shines through a curtain. I am shut out. Within there is peace,

and prayer, and sweet music rising up to heaven. Outside I kneel alone

by the closed gate. Everything is unreal. I feel as though it were the

gate of Paradise that is shut against me. But I can catch that in there

they are asking the good Lord to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and

the sweet pitying voices that sound as if angels were singing, echo the

prayer. They, too, are pleading for me, and I am comforted. And the

prayers and the music go their way, and seem to carry me up with them

towards heaven.

Again I am in a small dark room, and a grave man is listening while

I tell a story. He answers me, and I know that I have won my suit.

Cuthbert is to have the Gatehouse instead of me. It is promised to him,

and a great load is taken off my mind. Now Cuthbert need fear no future

for Hildred or himself. There was but that one way to help them both.

It only remained to send the letter I had already written back to

Cuthbert.

It was a good thing that it had been written slowly and carefully

beforehand, for now I could not hold my thoughts together, or keep them

on one thing for many minutes. In the letter I had told Cuthbert the

truth, though not the whole truth. I said that I had grown restless of

late, and Wyncliffe had become wearisome to me, so I had gone forth

into the world to seek my fortune; and that, if I left them all without

saying good-bye they must forgive me--leave-takings were but dreary

things; and I knew well how in their kindness they would try to keep me

back if they heard that I was going. The rest was easy to say. Cuthbert

must know how much rather I would think of him in the old place than

of a stranger. He would believe that he was doing me a kindness in

filling the post I had given up, so that the life-long tie that bound

me to Wyncliffe would be still unbroken, and some one would live in the

Gatehouse who loved it as much as I always should, though I was leaving

it. I hoped that he and Hildred would be happy there, as we had been

long ago.

Then I remember, but very dimly and confusedly, long days of travel,

one after the other, during which the only thing I cared for was to get

on quickly, farther yet farther, so as to put the greatest distance

between myself and all the places I had ever seen.

After that an unknown room; strange, but kindly faces bending

over a bed on which I lay, my own voice repeating always,

'Hildred--Cuthbert--little Jock, good-bye,' until my brain seemed to

turn round with the weary words.

The thread of memory breaks there.

I find myself again, crossing a moor on an autumn evening. The heather

is in bloom still, and looks purple-red in the low rays of the sun. The

wide heath, rising and falling like the waves of the sea, stretches

on to join the sky. Poised high aloft, on quivering wings, a sky-lark

sings its cloud-song. And far away, backed by the golden sunset, there

rises the spire of a little church, with a village clustering round it.

I am bound there. There is a pack on my shoulders, for I am a pedlar,

and am beginning to get the name you have all called me by for so many

years. I am Wandering Willie. In those days I had little heart to care

what I became. My life seemed to be over. I little thought how long it

would yet last.

But it has not been a sad one, though its story, such as it is,

ended on the day when I looked my last on the mist-covered towers of

Wyncliffe.

The sharp edge of sorrow wears down with time. Peace, the evergreen,

grows where joy once blossomed. The road-side flowers bloom fresh and

fair, though the garden has been left behind. I would not have things

otherwise than as they are. I would not have my youth back, though all

I once longed for so passionately were granted with it.

Youth can rarely say I am content, as I can. Young limbs must breast

the mountain side, and I have gained the top.

Hildred and Cuthbert lived long and happily. It was some years before

I let Cuthbert know where I was. Then immediately he came to me. After

that we saw each other every now and then; and though meeting seldom,

we were yet friends and brothers, as we had always been. There never

was another secret between us. Hildred long before had told her husband

all the story of his four years of absence.

But I never went back to Wyncliffe until I was an old man.

It was after an illness that I had, during which my thoughts turned

constantly to Hildred. A longing for her presence, that had been

stilled for many years, woke up once more and drew me towards her.

When next Cuthbert came to see me I went back with him to Wyncliffe.

As in a dream, nay rather, as one returning from the dead, I saw

again the once familiar places--the grey church, the lime-trees, the

village-green, where they were playing cricket just as they used in my

day. No one knew the old man. All the faces that I met were strange to

me; some only bore a dim ghostly likeness to people I had known.

Once or twice Cuthbert told me the name of a passer-by, as we went

along slowly under the lime-trees.

That was Jock Clifford's son, with the bat over his shoulder, a young

man, fair and ruddy, but twice as old as his father was when I last saw

him. From one of the cottages a child ran out, a brown-eyed toddling

little girl, who came towards Cuthbert with a scream of pleasure, and

called him grandfather. 'Our boy Will's little lass,' said Cuthbert,

raising her on to his shoulder. He called to a woman passing by and

bade her come and see an old friend. She came with the hesitating

look of one who is told to speak to a stranger. 'You do not know him,

Phillis,' Cuthbert said.

Was that Phillis, Hildred's little niece, the laughing rosy child that

I remembered? Could this be her?

My heart failed me. The day that I belonged to had indeed passed away.

I could not bear to see Hildred grown strange to me like the rest.

It was not that I should love the altered face less, far from it. But

I had carried the young bright image of my one love for so long in my

heart, I could not bear to lose it.

For those who lived with her, each line, each change, must have grown

dear. To me they would be strange, and I feared lest afterwards I might

never be able to call back again the gracious presence that had cheered

my lonely life.

So, as twilight was over before we reached the Castle, I begged

Cuthbert to leave me by the old well, and to bring Hildred to me

there, that, in the darkness, I might hold her hand and hear her voice

once more, then go my way, and still think of her without one shadow on

her face that time or care had thrown.

Cuthbert, willing to do my pleasure though he but half understood me,

obeyed my wish.

It was not for long that he left me alone, yet in those few minutes

my whole life seemed to pass before me. Near me, above the well, were

the old carved words of the promise I had once doubted. It had been

too hard for me to make out when I was a child--it was too dark to

read it now; yet even in this world it had been fulfilled. That cup

of cold water given a life-time ago, had in no wise lost its reward.

Cuthbert and Hildred had been happy. And for me, when I was left alone,

God Himself drew nigh and was my Friend; though there had been some

darkness on my way, the Light of lights, ever brightening, was shining

on it.

Thinking thus, I saw that a figure came towards me swiftly through the

darkness.

I took the hands she held out to me in my own, and heard her say,

'Willie, welcome home.'

Just for a few moments the weight of years was lifted off our heads,

and Hildred and I were boy and girl once more.

We did not say much, nor did I stay long with her. I was content to

have been near her, and to have listened to her voice. We parted

presently, with a blessing spoken quietly, as befitted those who had

once loved each other well, but whom God in His good providence had

parted, and who never looked to meeting in this world again. And I went

away.

So the two faces I have loved the most, Hildred's and my mother's,

never grew old for me, but shine on me still, and are for ever young,

for ever fair.

And I think that when I see them next they will be fairer yet, for they

will have 'put on immortality.'

CONCLUSION.

_Lead kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on.

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on._

* * * * *

_O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone,

And with the morn those angel faces smile,

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile._

On the following morning Wandering Willie was astir betimes. He was

bound for the farm-house where dwelt Roger's father--a good step, as he

said to Lois, across the hills.

It was not snowing when he started. The morning clouds were even

touched with red, but there were others hanging low down, grey clouds

with wind-frayed edges, that looked heavy still with snow.

Lois went with the old man as far as the gate, over the path, where

already, people coming and going, had beaten a track across the snow.

There she parted from him.

'It makes me sad to see you going away alone,' she said, leaning over

the gate, which he had already passed through, and holding his hand

across it.

'It is good to be alone,' said Willie, quietly.

'But the journey will be so long--so toilsome.'

'Then, Lois, I shall sleep the sounder at the end,' answered the old

man with a smile.

'Ah,' said Lois, 'you are tired already.'

'Already,' he repeated musingly. 'Am I _already_ tired? Is it not

nearly time for rest? Lois,' he went on, 'there was an old man who made

a prayer once, and I think since then it has ever been the best-loved

prayer of all the old and the weary. You know it?'

'I think I do,' said Lois.

'Yes, you know it well.' But still, as if he could not resist repeating

the dear words, Willie uncovered his head, saying in an earnest voice,

'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy

word.' Then he turned to Lois with his child-like smile, and continued:

'I have prayed it so very often, Lois, that I sometimes think the

answer must come soon.'

For a moment or two he still stood looking upward; afterwards, he bade

farewell again to Lois.

And Lois, answering in the words she knew would please him best, said

to him, 'Go in peace.'

She was glad that he left her with a smile--glad of the blessing he

called down upon her head.

Watching him as he went away steadily, with his face turned towards the

sun-rising, it seemed to Lois as if a rose-tinted morning cloud went

with him and overshadowed him.

On the evening of the following day Roger's father rode up to the

farm-house.

He brought tidings of wild weather out upon the moors, and told how

he and his good horse had been more than once all but buried in a

snow-drift.

'I should not have cared to come across on such a tempestuous day,' he

added, 'only I want an answer, Roger, to my question.'

'But you got my answer, surely,' said Roger, quickly; 'Wandering Willie

carried it to you yesterday.'

His father shook his head. 'Wandering Willie has not been nigh our

place,' he said, in a marked, grave tone.

All looked at each other, but no one spoke, only Lois gave a low cry,

'Oh Willie, poor Willie!'

'Lois,' said Roger, coming to her side, 'trust us; we will do all we

can--all that there is to do.'

Half-an-hour later every man about the farm went out into the darkness.

Lois, watching with her mother, saw her father go; Roger's father

too--his long ride and his weariness quite forgotten. They walked with

deliberate determined steps, and few words.

Far ahead already, Lois could just distinguish Roger--all the young

men of the place following him--as he stood for a moment a dim figure

against a dark sky. He disappeared, and Lois said in her heart, 'May

God go with him.'

Three hours--four hours passed--they must be searching still! None of

them returned that night.

About midnight the scattered groups of searchers met together. It was a

striking scene.

The setting moon, hung round with inky clouds, cast a pale glimmering

of light down on to the snow. All round, the moors lay wild and

tumbled, with black shadows here and there, cast by the waning moon.

It was cold, but intensely still, with a hush that gave an impression

of breathless expectation.

For a little while the men stood together consulting. Then they

separated again, Lois's father heading one party of searchers, while

Roger went with the other.

All carried lanterns, and when they had gone a little way in their

different directions, each, looking back towards the others, could only

see a few shadowy figures gliding on into the darkness.

The night passed on. The moon set, and the hours of great darkness that

came before the dawn had stolen upon them.

At last there came a shout from those a little way in front. The others

hurried up. They had found footmarks in the snow. For a little time

they followed them clearly; then they failed, for the wind had blown

the snow wildly about, and had effaced them.

They dispersed once more, and searched eagerly and silently. By and by

one of them called again. The footmark was found, and they never quite

lost it afterwards. Sometimes it went straight forward for a little

way, then it turned back over almost the same ground. Once or twice the

steps crossed and recrossed each other. Often, from the marks in the

snow, it seemed as if some one had stood still and waited, and turned

this way and that, searching for the road.

Then they stood still too and shouted, calling the lost man's name.

Again, and yet again. Strong men as they were, they shivered at the

dead blank silence that was their only answer. No echo even, sent them

back their voices.

The dawn was coming now, grey and chill, and there was a dull light

on the snow. They began to see each other's anxious faces. Still they

carried the lanterns low before them, and their great shadows followed

weird behind.

The red lantern-light fell on the frozen foot-prints, one by one. They

were easy to follow by this time. It must have ceased snowing before

they were made, and the wind, too, must have gone down. They were deep

and wavering now, as of one who walked heavily, dragging his steps

wearily through the snow.

A little way off there was a hollow in the moor, a broken ridge of

crags, and a huge stone, round one side of which the snow had drifted

thickly. The footsteps ended there.

When the men reached the stone they stood still, but they raised no

shout, though their search was over. Why was it that the voices which

had been strained so often to reach the lost man's ears, were sunk to a

low whisper now, that would not have roused a sleeping child?

Wandering Willie lay at their feet, his head resting on the

snow-covered stone. One hand was underneath his head, the other had

fallen by his side, and the staff lay close to it, just as the tired

hand had laid it down.

They tried gently to raise that arm, but it was quite stiff, frozen

into the snow. They laid their hands softly upon his heart, and it was

perfectly still. Then they let the full light from the lanterns fall

upon his face, and they saw that the old man looked utterly peaceful,

nay, almost smiling, and that his eyes were closed.

His pack was unstrapped, and lay beside him on the snow. He had said to

Lois that the toilsome journey would make him sleep all the sounder.

Yes, so soundly that nothing earthly would awake him, ever any more.

As they stood round him silently, with bowed heads, the clouds parted

in the east and the great sun rose up. The snow changed from dull grey

to sparkling white, the clouds floated in rosy brightness, and the sun

still rose until its clear red light streamed across Willie's face.

It was not hard to guess how it had been. The old man had found his way

easily, as long as he kept upon the beaten path, but when he struck

into the wild cross-track over the moor, the blinding mist and driving

sleet bewildered him. The wind-driven snow drifted across the path and

hid it, shrouding the familiar landmarks from his sight. It must have

been as though a white mask lay over all the country.

Willie had never got very far. They thought he must have tried to turn

back, but not until he had quite lost his way, and then the darkness

came on. At last, perplexed and probably very weary, he had lain down

to rest where the big stone sheltered him from the wind. After that he

did not suffer any more. Sleep and death came to him quietly, hand in

hand.

This was what Roger tried to tell Lois, when, going home before the

others, he met her coming towards him along the road that led to the

moor.

'Roger--well?'

'Dear Lois,' he said gravely and very tenderly, 'they are bringing him.

I came on to tell you. He could not have suffered much.'

'Oh Roger, then he is dead!'

'Yes, Lois, yes. We found him lying on the snow, looking as if he had

just fallen asleep.'

'Frozen to death. Oh, Roger--poor Willie!'

'Dearest,' he said, putting his arm round her, 'you would not cry if

you had seen his face.'

'But such a lonely death!'

'He is glad now,' said Roger, with something like a sob.

Was it a lonely death? Who knows? It may be that, bearing the summons

home, God had sent some messenger from the unseen world, who had been

suffered to become a visible presence to the closing eyes. It may be

that some voice--perhaps his mother's--had sounded once again in the

ears, where its echo had lingered so long. We cannot tell.

Only no child's head was ever pillowed more peacefully in its dreamless

sleep, than was Wandering Willie's, resting on the stone round which

the snow had drifted.

And who, that looked into his restful face, could doubt that the old

man's prayer was heard?

Down to the white moorland the Master sent at last, the message of

recall, and hearing it even through the deep snow-sleep of that

winter's night, His servant arose gladly, and from earth's storms and

weariness he departed in peace.

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