The just steward

XXI

He went to Katharine, before three o'clock, in the little oak parlour, a panelled, chintz-hung, feminine nest that her dead mother had loved—looking over the South garden, across the now frozen expanse of a curlew-haunted lake.

She rose up out of her low chair by the hearthside at the welcome sight of Edward, and at her dear look his fetters seemed to fall from him and for one blessed minute he forgot—in the bliss of their embrace....

Attar of roses is composed of two essential oils, both scentless. When these meet and mingle, a divine perfume is born. So from the meeting of two pure and noble souls an ideal passion is engendered. Love that is founded on the rock of Reality,—yet capped with the cloud-domes of Imagination, cloaked with the glamour—exhaling the sweetness of Poetry and Romance.

It may be that these two had loved each other too purely for their earthly welfare. But as they settled into talk, fond, intimate, personal—tinged with Katharine's sacred sorrow, and yet illuminated with their joy—it seemed to Yaill that he had never yet tasted such happiness, as in this long-delayed, long-desired exchange of touch and thought and feeling—this perfect comradeship between woman and man.

Three o'clock sounded from the clock upon the mantelshelf, a Tudor toy in enamel openwork, whose tiny chime had rung for many a lover's meeting—and hastened many a lover's parting—but never heralded one more tragic than was coming now. He raised his head from its sweet rest on her beloved shoulder, and slowly loosed the yearning arms that had girdled her supple waist. Now,—now let the revelation come—the sooner the better. But how to bring it about? ...

Unwitting Katharine assisted here, by telling him how that morning Dawtie, the General's old pointer-bitch, had been found dead and already stiffened at her post outside the chapel door. Yaill said, scarce knowing what he uttered:

"You will be even—lonelier—without her. You must let me find you another dog to fill her empty place."

"Edward?"

Her sweet eyes lifted to his face. She saw him changed—changing. Deep lines graven on the broad brow that had smoothed under her kisses. Folds of bitterness from either wing of the large sensitive nostrils to the corners of the lips.

"Dear Edward, Dawtie was very old, and very seldom with me. And there are Bran and Laddie—if I should need the companionship of dogs. But soon now, very soon—there is nothing to prevent it"—She looked calmly in his face as he knelt on the rug beside her, stiffly upright, not touching her, both hands gripping the arm of her chair—"in a very few weeks—we shall be married, shall we not?"

He did not speak, and her eyes wavered from his, and a blush burned over her whole fair body: for was it not the man's part to speak such words as these? She said again: "Shall we not?" ... There was a terrible pause.... The clock chimed the quarter-hour....

"Shall we not, Edward, loving as we do—after these cruel years of delay?" ...

Unable to credit her own vision, she saw creeping into his grey eyes—was it reluctance, distaste or dismay? ... A shock went through her.... Rushing sounds filled her ears and through them she heard her own voice crying to him:

"Edward! ... For God's sake, don't look at me so! Something is wrong.... My dearest, tell me!" ...

Her arms went out to draw him close, and came back empty. He had drawn back, avoiding them, and risen to his feet. A quiver passed over his thin brown face, such as in windless weather will ripple the sleeping surface of some quiet forest pool. And the question came from her that she had never dreamed of asking:

"Is it that you do not love me—in the marriage sense—any more? Am I nothing but a friend? ... Answer.... I command you—answer!"

Yaill's face was drawn and grey. He said,—keeping stiff control upon the muscles of his lips:

"You are the one woman I worship.... I have never known another whose person so charms me, whose nature so appeals to me,—whose mind is so clear and full,—whose sympathy is so warm, so sweet, whose soul so answers to mine—"

"Edward!" ...

All reassured, she breathed the name in a tone of exquisite tenderness. He made her a sign that he had not done, and went slowly on:

"I have desired—desire you now as man desires the woman he worships. When our marriage was postponed by the death of your mother—when the Regiment was ordered to India and you could not leave your father—when this thrice-accursed War burst on the world in a blizzard of fire and steel, and I had to leave you almost at the church-door—God is my witness that I suffered! Far more than I could tell you, Katharine!"

"Love of my heart, I know it! ..."

He signed to her again for silence:

"Do not interrupt me! All this is hard to say.... But though my heart often cried out to you in those mad years of filthy fighting—living, eating and sleeping—did we ever sleep?—in the company of the Dead—while the world one had known and lived in—the world of pretty women—decent clothes, pleasant week-ends, jolly shooting-parties, sport, play, good hunters and easily-running cars—seemed—except in short flashes of intervals—to have been dead for cycles of ages—I was buoyed up by my hopes of you, my thoughts of you—your letters and our short rare blessed meetings. Glimpses of Paradise to a soul in Purgatory! You will believe that, will you not, Katharine?" ...

One tear glittered on his hard cheek. Oh! to have dried it with her kisses, and whispered comfort to her dearest, wrought to this desperate mood by some unknown cause.... But she sat still as he had bidden, soothed by his words of tenderness, yet with a little shivering premonition beginning to quicken at the roots of her heart:

"Then came the Great Disaster.... Oh! why didn't I marry you, when I got back to England—"

"My love," she said, "my precious dear!—I asked you to, you know!"

He made a despairing gesture of assenting:

"And I would not accept the gift you offered in your generosity—dear love, sweet woman!—best friend an unlucky devil ever had or could have! ..."

"Why?"

That "Why?" came like a moan from her. He answered sadly:

"Because I wanted to go away alone somewhere. To look my new self in the face, or to recapture the lost me. Thousands of men have felt the same—feel like that even at this moment—coming back with raw nerves and jumbled brains out of the hell of War."

"Then God help the women who love them!" said Katharine Forbis.

"They will suffer," said Edward Yaill, "until they have learned to understand the men. As you, pearl of women!—understood me, and pitied me. Can I ever forget that!"

"Stop!" She held up her hand in warning. "Do not praise me. For I believed your heart had changed to me. For a long time I believed it, and suffered horribly.... And then thank God, I found out one day that it was not so." ...

"When I came Home to tell you I had got back the Regiment.... There was just time—we could have made the time—to have got married then.... What stepped in? ... Fate! Was it Fate, Katharine? ..."

She knew their chance of happiness had been baulked again as ever by the inconquerable vacillation of this brave man she loved. But unshaken in her loyalty, she looked back at Edward, repeating with unfaltering lips:

"Just Fate—I suppose. Let us leave it at that and look forward to the Future. And the years we may have to spend together if it be God's Will."

Her voice blurred with held-back tears;

"But—don't keep me waiting any longer, dear Edward! I never have—never could have dreamed the possibility of changing towards you.... But if I get more lonely—if I get much more lonely than I am now—"

Was it possible that cry of tortured womanhood could have come from Katharine? Must she, his proud one, stoop, and stoop to plead? With clasped hands and yearning eyes of pain entreating—

"O Edward! don't keep me waiting long! Think of the years—"

He said with forced deliberation:

"We may even yet have years to spend together—if you have courage to forgive a grievous wrong!"

"What do you mean? ... How have you wronged? ... Have you not told me—"

Her voice had the sharpness of the stab he had dealt her, as she rose up out of her fireside chair.

"I will tell you what I mean—what I meant to have spared you, had not the man who came here yesterday with the documents from Palestine—had not that man threatened to tell you if I did not."

"To tell me what? Let me hear it now! You look ill, Edward!"

"To tell you that I am married!" said Edward Yaill....

As she stood before him, straight and tall, he saw the life go out of her. For an instant he looked on a dead, bloodless thing. Then the banished blood rushed back from about her heart. Her lips and eyes retained the look of life, but the face was a stranger's, and not Katharine's. Nor was it Katharine's voice that said:

"To tell me that you are married? ... Who is she?"

He hardly recognised his own voice saying:

"She is a nurse.... She was attached to the Convalescent Camp at B—— Base."

"Ah! ... And her name?" ...

"Lucy Burtonshaw."

"Ah! ..."

The interjection dropped from her pale lips like an icicle. But her breeding wrapped her in an impregnable mantle of dignity. His sense of her new remoteness was desolating as she asked him:

"And why are you here with me and not with Lucy Burtonshaw? I beg her pardon!—I should have said, Mrs. Edward Yaill. Can you explain?"

"I can explain absolutely. Whether you would believe me—that is another thing!"

"Let—let me think! ..." She put her hand to her forehead, pushing back her hair with a gesture of bewilderment. All her world lay in ruins round her, since those few sentences had fallen from his lips....

Rejected.... Betrayed.... Cast off.... She, Katharine Forbis, so great, so beloved, so beautiful,—the desired of many honourable, brave, high-born, handsome and wealthy men. Edward Yaill had never been told how many aspirants had sought her,—how many brilliant offers she had steadfastly set aside. Choosing for years to walk in maiden loneliness—keeping her priceless treasure of splendid womanhood stored up,—hoarded away to this unutterable end....

She moaned, and put her hand to her heart an instant when he said she would not believe if he explained himself. Nothing cut deeper or more cruelly than that. She said with the calmness of a mortally-wounded gentlewoman:

"I have not deserved that you should so judge me.... Say what you think is to be said for you.... This person—this lady who is now your wife—is the nurse—unless I am mistaken?—to whom I entrusted my letters to keep in charge for you?"

"The same. And she betrayed the trust.... She kept your letters. It was only on Thursday morning they first reached my hands." Always chary of gesture, he stretched them out to her, and drew them back and clenched—and let them fall again. "But for the accident of my getting the last letter you wrote me, upon the morning I was discharged from the Convalescent Camp—I might never have known—never remembered—" His voice broke. He turned away and leaned upon the mantelshelf, and bowed his shamed head over his folded arms.

"Edward! ..."

Her hand went out and lightly touched his shoulder. He thrilled at the tone in which she spoke his name:

"Edward, tell everything, and I will listen! ..."

He said in a choked voice, averting his face from her that she might not see the tears that brimmed and fell:

"God bless you for your mercy to me, Katharine! ... But the story is so wild and so incredible—I dare not hope for your entire belief.... You have believed in my devoted love for you.... I have lived, all these years, for you alone.... Yet last Thursday, when I awakened from that strange illusion—in the room at that Coombe Bay hotel"—Katharine shuddered—"I was married," he made a despairing gesture,—"married to a poor, weak, commonplace girl."

"She is your wife.... You are bound to remember it...."

He said:

"I have done so far more than she deserves.... I have written to my solicitors—have provided for her generously.... Do not think me capable of leaving her to poverty.... But I cannot—will not share my life with her! ..."

"Loneliness can be worse to bear than poverty. And—once again—remember—she is your wife!"

"She is welcome to what good may be got from that position! She has schemed for it—"

"Be just to her.... You have owned to me that you told her you were poor. Why? ..."

"Heaven knows why—or Hell! I have no answer.... But she had only to ask—to make inquiries—to be enlightened on the subject of my money!"

Chivalrous Katharine flashed out in defence of her enemy.

"Do you suppose the surgeons at the Camp would have told her? Or that your medical report would have supplied such details? Or do you think Burke's 'Landed Gentry' is a work of reference accessible to nurses? ..."

He broke out with whirling words—frantic asseverations. He would get a divorce.... A suit for Nullity could be obtained under the circumstances—once the circumstances should be made clear. Another touch of contempt frosted her tone as she said to him:

"The marriage is legal. And though you seem to have forgotten your religion—when you speak of divorce to me, I must ask you to remember that I am a Catholic woman, Colonel Yaill!"

"Forgive me! ..."

He sat down haggard and exhausted.... She, too, resumed her seat, for her strength was failing fast.... And so they sat in a sorrowful-grim travesty of the old happy comradeship. She looked so sorrow-stricken and yet so sweet as she sat there in her mourning for her lost one,—that the heart of Yaill was more than ever tortured by the fierce agony of hopeless love.

"Think!—" he said to her desperately, "for I cannot.... Is there no way of escape from this horrible pitfall into which I have tumbled with open eyes? Think! ... Or cannot you think of anything, Katharine? ..."

She said to him gently:

"Wait.... I will think, and tell you presently.... Only wait and be patient a little, my poor dear!"

For she could not withhold her compassion and forgiveness from this man with the furrowed face of anguish, and the haunted, desperate eyes. No longer her hero, her ideal of perfect manliness and honour,—but a mere man, to be loved and pitied, and made excuses for. Or—her sick heart knew a ray of Hope.... In her white cheeks dawned a tinge of colour.... Was he one of the innumerable, blameless martyrs made by the accursed War?

XXII

She could bear to live if Edward proved a martyr and not a traitor. Oh! let him be the other woman's husband if it must be—as long as Katharine knew him guiltless. She bent her brow and set her rare mental powers of clear thought, reasonable argument and logical deduction, to trace a mean between a biassed partisanship and common justice.... One had known such strange, abnormal things result from shellshock.... And Edward loved her.... Oh! most entirely loved her.... It would be possible to live on, empty of joy, bare of all happiness—if Edward were a martyr.... God send it might prove so....

She gripped the arms of her chair and shut her eyes, striving to reconstruct the situation, assembling all the evidence upon his side; trying to live through all those twilit months the life of the man with the jangled nerves, and the numbed and blunted brain.... Just, generous, noble-minded Katharine, incapable of pettiness, great in her desolation.... She opened her eyes, to encounter the sorrowful stare of his—and began to speak, calmly, almost cheerfully—drawing him on insensibly to talk to her of that day....

That day in September of the previous year, when in those trenches south of Loos the First Battalion of the "Tweedburghs" had been wiped out, almost to a man, for the second time in the War.

"Why should you want to hear that story again—and now?" he pleaded: "My God, don't ask me to tell it now! ..."

But she asked it with her steady eyes upon him; and he obeyed her with knitted brows and twitching lips and cold sweat upon his face:

"The Germans had started shelling our front-line parapet at 5.30 that morning.... At a rough calculation they pounded us with eleven hundred guns.... Half the battalion were in the front line, and half in supports. And we had been given instructions to hold those trenches at any cost...."

He licked his dry lips and threw her a dog-like glance of entreaty. But she waited inexorably and he went on:

"We had taken them by assault and we weren't willing to lose them. Our guns gave back Hell for leather, but we kept getting Super-Hell. News kept coming through to us at Battalion Headquarters, of casualties, fresh casualties.... Always killed—hardly ever wounded! ... My God—my God! ... And at last I and my Adjutant—Cameron-Bain—were left at Headquarters with a few orderlies, cooks and bottle-washers. We'd sent up practically every man through the barrage to help 'em carry on.... And all my officers were killed except two. Jameson and Kinray-Heptown, the officers in charge of the Advanced Line Wireless and Telephone Communications. Don't ask to hear the rest. What good can it do? ..."

"It is my right," she answered him, "to hear this story from you.... And I am waiting...."

So he went on:

"There came a minute when Cameron-Bain and I stared at each other blankly across a pit of horror. We found the Advanced Line Communications getting queer and dribbling into incoherency.... Then they stopped.... And we knew that the worst had happened—though we waited, hoping against hope that Kinray-Heptown would speak again. Then we tossed up a penny to decide which of us— This hurts! ... Must I carry through with it to the end? ..."

Her great maternal heart wept tears of blood for him. But yes.... For his sake she compelled him to carry through....

"I called 'Tails' and won, though Bain swore I hadn't.... Then we shook hands and I went up through the German barrage. Trains of stretcher-bearers and wounded—our stretcher-bearers and our wounded—lay dead upon that horrible road.... And I got to Supports—and found them evacuated, except for the Dead—there were plenty of dead men! Gas was being sent over from our Advanced trench by somebody—the wind being in our favour—if nothing else was! But the German guns kept on sending over High Explosive—5.9 shell—and shrapnel: and the fire of their machine-guns—they were enfilading us from two angles—came at us like a solid wall of lead! ..."

He wetted his parched lips and rubbed his forehead. And still she waited for him to tell the rest.

"I got to the Advanced trenches.... Hardly even challenged! The few men left alive there looked at me as if I'd been a ghost. But they carried on, and I pushed through to the T. & W. dug-out, to find it had been blown in by a High Velocity Shell. Kinray-Heptown, our T.C.O., lay dead—sprawling over the table, his blood and brains and so on—all mixed up horribly with the débris. And his assistant—Jameson—was in the same case. But the Wireless and telephone installations were in working-trim,—so I took them both over—receiving and transmitting messages in Morse Code from the connected Advanced Posts through Cameron-Bain to Brigade Headquarters, until one by one they left off talking, and I took off the head-band and put down the receiver—"

He might have but now come in out of the rain, his haggard face so streamed with wet....

"Because I knew they were all dead and that I was alone.... Then a blaze of hot yellow light filled the place—and the table reared on its hind-legs—and Kinray-Heptown—dead as stone and covered with blood, and with his skull—you know!—I've told you!—Heptown stood bolt upright a second—and then went for me!"

He laughed, the loud, unnaturally harsh laugh that had startled Katharine on the night of his arrival....

"High Explosive plays queer tricks. Another 5.9 shell had landed in the dug-out—and I was pinned down with Heptown on top of me—and the heavy case of the Wireless outfit on top of him—and the corrugated zinc, and sandbags, and earth of the roof on top of all! And I lay there with his awful face crushed down on mine, and remembered," he laughed again harshly, "what a silly kind of ass he used to be.... Always running after new women and howling for sympathy—because he was such a poor devil, without a rap beyond his pay—and hadn't a living relative in the world...."

"Edward! O Edward! my poor love! ..."

He did not hear her voice of throbbing tenderness. He was passing through that unspeakable ordeal again:

"A dismal man. They called him 'Gummidge' in the Regiment, and the nickname fitted the beggar to a 'T.' How I crawled out from under him ... can't imagine for the life of me! Probably my tin hat saved me from smothering.... They say I'd not a rag on when they found me—yellow as a guinea from melinite and smeared with blood—not mine, but Heptown's! Poor devil!—not a rap beyond his pay—not a living soul belonging to him in the world! ..."

He shuddered, and knitted his hands together closely, and so sat rigid—battling with some invisible power that strove with him for mastery of will....

"Edward! ..."

She was kneeling by his chair,—her arms wrapped round about him, her cheek to his,—the swell and heave of her bosom close to his—her warmth and sweetness his—all his once more....

"All is quite clear to me now. You have not wronged me! You are blameless—my man of men! Listen, dear Edward! In some way strange to us, clear to neurologists—when you lay buried alive, pinned down helpless by the body of that poor dead officer, the horror of those dreadful minutes—or hours—stamped his personality—branded it, I might better say—upon your memory so that you could not forget it if you would! The story you told to that poor girl afterwards—your conviction that you were poor, unloved and friendless—all came from that—were part of the strange obsession. Dear, in my eyes you are quite blameless. Forgive me, Edward, if"—he felt the sob she bravely kept back—"in the first agony of hearing what you have told me—I let myself feel resentful towards you!"

"Katharine!"

He drew a great breath of relief, and his load was lightened. She believed.... Oh, wonder of wonders, she believed.... He faltered:

"Then you do not hate and despise me? ..."

Her swift kiss touched his hands. He heard her saying:

"On the contrary, I admire, I love, I worship you!—my hero, my martyr—my King—my man of men! ..."

"KATHARINE!"

In the rapture of that declaration Yaill would have embraced her; clasped her close to his starving heart and covered her with caresses. But she freed herself from him gently and with decision, though he pleaded humbly for a single kiss.

"Dear, when we say Good-bye, then I will kiss you. It is my right, I shall not waive my claim. We were husband and wife in soul if not in actuality—we are parted—not through any mutual change of feeling, but by an act of the inscrutable Will of God. You have a wife—it is for us to remember it!—and so I ask you to go away from here—"

"'Go!' ... Leave you now? ..."

His face grew hard and obstinate.

"Why should I leave you? Do we not love each other? Have we not, as you say yourself, been one in heart for all these years! ... We have done no wrong, so why should we suffer? And, if I leave you, where am I to go? Not back to that woman? ..."

A spasm contracted her white face to a pinched mask of jealousy. He hardly knew the voice that came through the clenched teeth and stiffened lips:

"Why not? She is your wife!"

"My wife through a vulgar deceit. Don't say you hold her guiltless?"

"Almost, if she believed you!" she forced herself to say.

"And this is your love!" he snarled at her, stung to injustice.

She answered—and the voice was once more Katharine's:

"This is my love! ..."

He wheeled to the fireplace and stood in thought, resting his elbow on the mantelshelf. When he looked back at her it was to say:

"And if I obey you now and leave you, what are your plans? What do you intend to do?"

She told him:

"I had made up my mind—supposing you had left me this time without settling a definite date for our marriage—that I would get drafted out to the East to help Hilda. You remember Lady Donnithorpe? She was a great friend of mine, I have often told you, when we were girls together at Chalkcliff—fellow-pupils at the Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.... Sir Hugo is on the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief at Cairo. Hilda is Commandant of the Red Cross Hospital at Montana—seventeen miles from Alexandria—standing in wonderful grounds. It was formerly, or so I understand—a palace of the ex-Khedive. I could drive a car for them, or nurse—I have my certificate—"

"You seem to have got your plans all ready cut and dried—without much reference to me! ..."

His face was wrung as he looked round at her.

"Don't be cruel, Edward! Do not let me remember by-and-by—that on this day that sees me shorn of everything, you were unkind—for the first time...."

He gave a short, impatient groan.

"Who is unkind to both of us but yourself? But you shall be obeyed—I will leave Kerr's Arbour."

Each of the five words gave her its separate stab. She never winced, but said to him unfalteringly:

"There is a train from Cauldstanes at six o'clock. You could catch the King's Cross Express by changing at Carlisle...."

"And it is now four-thirty."

From habit he had glanced at the cheap watch strapped upon his wrist.... The heavy lines between his knitted brows deepened and a vein throbbed in his temple, as he stripped the poor trinket from his wrist and dropped it into the glowing heart of the fire. The glass burst with a sharp little crack—and the leather strap writhed among the hot, devouring flames so like some reptile dying in torment that Katharine turned her eyes away. As Yaill's hard, level voice went on saying:

"From Cauldstanes, six o'clock! ... Thanks! that train would suit me very well. Please no—don't ring!" Her hand had gone out to touch the stud of the bell beside the fireplace. "Don't trouble to order any kind of trap.... I had much rather walk. Some hard tramping in the frosty air will do me good.... Really.... I should prefer it! ..."

"But—your luggage!" She looked at him anxiously.

"My kit! ..." He could have laughed outright, but he controlled himself by main force, and went on in the same stiff, formal tone: "Send it to-morrow morning by an early train to my Club in Pall Mall. I shall take care to leave it properly addressed, so that you have no trouble of any kind—"

"Edward.... Be just ... be fair! Don't—torture me like this!"

The cry broke from Katharine barely of her volition. She caught him by the wrists.

"How am I torturing you?" he asked her coldly.

"What have you decided to do?" Her eyes were on a level with his, begging, commanding. "Tell me! ..." She caught him by the wrists. "Are you going back—to her? ..."

"No!"

Her hands had been like steel upon Yaill's wrists. Her eyes, tawny and fierce as those of an enraged lioness, were fixed upon his. The pang of pity she had felt for the poor giver of the destroyed watch was lost in her anguished sense of her own despoliation,—her own helpless impotence to hold her usurped rights.... But at that deep, stern No! from him her hands grew weak upon his wrists, and the lioness-fury in her eyes died out and left them tender....

"I have said to you that I cannot share my life with her—the woman I have married. I swear to you she shall want for nothing—be treated honourably! As to my plans—the most definite is to go to the Near East and find your brother Julian. Not to fight with Turks for the Holy Sepulchre. My faith is dead in me. When God gives me back You, then I will be friends with Him! Until then—"

"Oh, Edward, hush! ..."

"I will not shock you more, dearest of living women. Give me that one last kiss, and say: 'Good luck to you on your road!' For at the end of the road I may find your brother Julian. In some Turkish prison—enclosure or labour-camp, working under the lash. Now will you kiss—"

"Not here, dear Edward! ..."

She draped her head with the black-lace veil that had been her dead mother's, and smiled—how could she bear to smile?—as she held out her hand....

"We will say our Good-bye in the chapel.... Come, my dearest! ..."

He could not resist her look, her touch.... Together, they went out....

The fragrance of incense was sweet in the still place, the treasure-chamber of this Catholic dwelling; where you felt the Blessed Sacrament as a guarded Flame, a vital Essence, a Presence mysterious and impalpable, yet instinct with latent Power and conserved Force. When Katharine bowed in adoration of her Lord and Master, Yaill stood erect, silently defying Him,—with set jaws and scowling brows, and hard glittering eyes.

But when Katharine rose, and again took his hand, his icy armour melted. His eyes softened and he yielded to her touch like a big, docile child. She drew him to the small Communion-rail—knelt on the worn red cushion, and was silent; gathering strength to speak, fighting with her anguish; while the haggard frowning man stood stiffly waiting at her side.

A moment more and Katharine's low voice flowed out upon the silence. She said, to the Living Presence in the Veiled Tabernacle:

"My Saviour and my God, Thou seest at Thy Footstool two of Thy servants, who after long years of love and fidelity, and patient waiting and hopes often frustrated, are parted—for life perhaps—as if Death had come between. We do not know—"

The sweet voice wavered and then went on steadily:

"We do not know why we must suffer—we only know it is Thy Will. And we offer Thee—O give us strength to offer Thee! this agony of parting—in submission to Thy Majesty and in expiation of our sins—

"What sins?" Yaill asked her in a deep, stern voice.

She seemed not to hear, and went on speaking:

"The sins that we weak mortals have committed in our lives. And now to Thy care, Who didst offer Thyself a living Sacrifice for the redemption of the world upon the Altar of the Cross—I commend my beloved whom Thou hast taken from me! Preserve him in body and in soul from every sort of danger. Guide him, guard him—lead him upon his path in life.... And if—"

She heard Yaill's boot-heel grind upon the stone, and knew that he was trembling....

"Let this end! ..." he said below his breath. "Do you hear me! End now, Katharine! ..."

But she went on, fighting,—had he known the truth,—for the soul of him, her dearest:

"And if we may never be one on earth, O let us be one in Heaven! ..."

Yaill gritted his teeth savagely, and a rending sob tore through his frame. The tears were streaming down his face as he stammered out to her, gulping and choking:

"Lend me ... hanky ... Kathy! I can't find—"

She gave him her handkerchief as a mother might a child, and went resolutely on to the end of her prayer.

"And now before Thee, here present in the Blessed Sacrament as truly as when Thou didst walk with Thy Beloved upon this sorrowful earth,—I promise to be faithful to Edward Yaill my lover, in body and soul, through Life till Death, and in the Eternal Life! ..."

He gave a hoarse inarticulate cry and sank to his knees beside her. She turned and folded him in her arms, and his face sank on her bosom, and the black-lace veil that draped her head fell over his too. It smelt of violets. His scalding tears wetted her neck.... She lifted his face and kissed him,—with all her soul kissed him. But a fold of her mother's black-lace veil came between her mouth and his.

XXIII

Long after Edward Yaill had gone, and Night had settled down upon Kerr's Arbour, old James Whishaw hobbled noiselessly into the chapel to find Katharine kneeling there. He bent his own stiff rheumatic knees upon a chair behind her, and waited, and said a prayer for the daughter of his dead master, dear to him as a daughter of his own. Her face was hidden in her hands, her lace veil fell over them. No movement stirred its patterned folds, no sigh nor sob escaped her.... She might have been the statue of a kneeling woman, wrought in black marble or ebony.

"Miss Forbis, mem!" the ancient servitor whispered after an interval. There was no response. Grown desperate, he ventured a fresh appeal.

"Miss Katharine! ... Miss Kathy, for your ain sake!—for a' our sakes—"

The quavering terror in the cracked, familiar voice reached her. She stirred, and answered:

"You, Whishaw? ... Am I wanted? ... Who—"

She tried to rise to her feet, but could not. The old man hurried to her and lent his feeble strength to help her, and she rose up and they came out of the church together, slowly, arm in arm. As the door swung-to behind them, she put back her veil and whispered:

"Has Colonel Yaill?—"

The butler hardly recognised the drained white face she turned to him. Her voice was a mere thread of sound, the shadow of itself.

"He has gone this hoor an' mair," he said, "an' a wire has juist come for him. My bairn—Miss Katharine, dearie!—there is anither for him that's gane! An' O I doot bad news in baith, by word the bringer dropped wi' them—"

"Give me the wires.... I understand...." she said. "The messenger has gossiped?"

"They're weel kent for loose-tongued, claverin' bodies at Cauldstanes Post Office," owned Whishaw, adding bitterly: "Nor ye'll no' bind Discretion on Meggy Proodfoot, wi' the King's Croon on her airm." He took the salver with the two orange envelopes from a console table in the hall, and brought it to his mistress, entreating: "Gin' ye could see yer ain face ye wad be frichtit, Miss Katharine. Let me get ye a glass o' wine before ye'se open them, my lamb!"

But Katharine mingled no juice of the grape with this, her latest draught of the strong black wine of Sorrow. She opened the envelope that bore Yaill's name, and by the light of the great wood fire that blazed in the hall hearthplace, deciphered the message it contained.

"This must be re-telegraphed to Edward's London Club," flashed through her mind before the vile sense of the words upon the sheet drove clearly home to her; and then she started as though their concentrated venom had seared to the very bone.

"Have discovered where you are. Return instantly or I shall follow. Your wife, Lucy Yaill. Tor View, Coombe Bay."

A moment Katharine staggered under the shock. Then with the fierce blood burning in her cheeks, she won her shaken composure back, saying as she encountered the Watery blue stare of her ancient servitor:

"There is nothing to trouble us in this. I know it to be not important." And she crumpled up the flimsy sheet and dropped it into the midmost of the fire, adding: "We will not trouble Colonel Yaill by forwarding it at all."

Then she opened the other orange envelope. It held a communication from the Casualty Department at the War Office, and told her with official brevity that her brother Julian was dead.

"Regret to inform news received from eye-witness confirms report that Father Julian Forbis, O.S.G., R.C. Chaplain —th Brigade, 29th Division, Mediterranean Forces, Gallipoli, was killed on August 21st by direct hit Turkish shrapnel shell during storming of Scimitar Hill. No remains recoverable."

She read out the withering message of disaster in a low clear voice devoid of a trace of expression. The butler and the servants who had gathered in the hall broke into sobs and lamentations. But what avail are tears and outcries? They are only of use to vent the sorrow that is neither poignant or profound. Miss Forbis went to the drawing-room and penned some telegrams; one to the Father Superior of Julian's Monastery at Clerport, one to Julian's dearest friend, in the trenches before Arras,—a brief note to the lawyer and notary, Mr. Kellar,—already (through that local Post Office leakage) in possession of the intelligence,—and a third telegram for Colonel Edward Yaill, addressed to his London Club.

And then, moving mechanically as an automaton, she went from the room, encountered Whishaw and gave the messages to be taken into Cauldstanes that night by a mounted groom. The wires to be left at the private house of the postmaster for despatch in the early morning; the note to be handed to Mr. Kellar, sitting with his old cronies over his toddy and his well-loved rubber of whist.

Mrs. Bell, Miss Forbis's elderly companion (worn out by the day's sorrowful ceremonial) had long retired to her room. Time enough to break the news to her upon the following morning. Katharine ordered the wearied servants to shut up the house and go to bed, and herself set the example. But when her tearful maid had quitted her for the night, reluctantly and wistfully,—she could not bear the notion of lying down in that now desolate house to rest. It stifled her. So she dressed again,—threw over all a hooded woollen mantle, took a small electric lantern and went out of the room....

To ascend above the level of ordinary daily existence, to climb a height and draw into the lungs long breaths of purer air, seems to be a craving shared by not only those whose bodies are racked and worn by chronic suffering, but by those others who in heart and soul are wrung by mental pain. The Lawgiver of Israel ascended into the fastnesses of Sinai—not only to receive the commands of the Most High—but to hide his anguish at the backslidings of his rebellious people—turning to unholy commerce with Egyptian god-devils and Canaanitish idols,—from the pure worship of the One God. And His Son was wont to climb the solitary heights of mountains, when He was weary with the healing of multitudes—and oppressed with His burden of human woe! And since His day, how many others have known the need, and sought the same alleviation:

"When on the heights I drink the air
    And watch the budding of each star
Out of the dusk, this grief I bear
Is somewhat soothed; my load of care
    Lightens, and Thou art not so far—"

Descending to the ground-floor, Katharine, barely of her own volition, passed through a small, heavy baize-covered door at the northern end of the hall. It led into the Tower, and she crossed a great stone-flagged, stone-vaulted room lighted by narrow window-slits high in the massive stone walls, unlocked another door with a key that was in the lock, huge and old-fashioned, but oiled and working smoothly, and came out at the foot of the narrow stone stairway that spiralled, storey by storey, to the top of the Tower.

She was weary, but the turmoil and anguish of her spirit set the claims of the body out of court. She moved on, tall and stern and beautiful, flashing her guiding light on a jutting stone in the wall here, or a broken step there,—just as though she were conducting some visitor to admire the famous view from the battlements.

The young moon of February rode high in the southern heavens. The Standard hung at half-mast from the flagstaff of the Tower. There was little wind to stir its heavy pendent folds, what there was came almost balmily in drifts from the west.

Some belated workman or field-labourer was going home across the policy,—or possibly some gamekeeper or shepherd may have been setting out upon his nightly rounds. The night being dark and still, he sang; perhaps because he was sorrowful, possibly because he was happy; it may have been to cheer his loneliness. But whoever he was, he had a voice; a sweet, if untutored baritone,—and the matchless beauty and poignant pathos of "The Land o' the Leal" beat in wave upon wave of anguish, and sorrow, and yearning, upon Katharine's tortured soul....

"O God!" she cried aloud in her anguish, "I cannot bear it. Desolate, desolate, stripped bare of everything! ... All of them taken!—Mark and my father, and to-day Edward! ... O Edward, my love! and Julian! ... Ah! ..."

And her own cry was flung back from the battlements, so thin, so weirdly eldritch that she shuddered at the sound....

Madness was near my Katharine in that hour of abandonment. But when the wild spirit of Marioun Forbis, whose tragic tale I have not time to tell here, cried to her: "Be bold! One leap will end it!" and the thin ghostly hands of proud, sinful Countess Edith plucked at her garments to drag her to the battlements; and Mistress Juliana, who starved herself to death for grief because her too-severely punished babe had died in a fit in the dark cupboard where it had been shut up after a whipping, lent her impalpable, invisible aid to urge her kinswoman to the desperate deed,—the saintly Mother St. Edward, Abbess of the Brigittine Convent of Syon (stripped of all and driven thence to exile with her Community by the edict of fierce Elizabeth), whispered of submission to the Divine Will. And heroic Madam Lucy—who nursed her smitten household back to life through the days when the Great Plague raged in England,—and only lay down to die at length when all she loved were safe,—leaned to her ear and whispered "Courage!" and countless other noble women of her ancient race gathered about her then....

And at last the memory of her own lost, beloved mother rose up to aid her, and the Mother of All Mothers—pitying her faithful daughter's anguish—interceded with Her Divine Son that the gift of prayer might be restored to ease the breaking heart....

It came like a spate among the hills after long drought, and Katharine fell upon her knees, and leaned her aching head against the rough-hewn stone, and told God all her trouble, and knew that He heard.... Then she rose up calmed and comforted, and so went down the Tower stair and back to her bedroom. And slept and dreamed of a gigantic man,—tawny-brown of skin, and with a vast black beard, fierce black eyes and a great hooked nose exactly like John Hazel's,—wrapped in a vast hooded mantle—carrying an iron-shod staff like St. Christopher's—and wearing immense boots such as are never seen now. He went before her over a desert which she needs must traverse, seeking for the lost Julian—a waved expanse of scorching yellow sand, peopled by ugly Things that lived in burrows, and kept popping up their diabolical horned heads to mock and gibe at Katharine.... Then the Bearded One stood in the midst of a raging torrent (which it seemed that Katharine must negotiate), and leaned on his immense staff to steady himself, stretching out the other hand to help her across.... There was a black onyx intaglio of Hercules in an antique setting of greenish gold on his huge forefinger.... And his vast hand, as it enfolded hers, felt warm and friendly and kind. And she asked, for the black eyes under the dense black brows were more like than ever:

"You're John Hazel, really, aren't you? ..."

And the huge man answered, in a booming bass, showing great white teeth in the thicket of his hirsuteness:

"Nay, daughter of the race of him I loved! But John Hazaël is of me!"

XXIV

Wonderful times, these of which I write, fruitful in world-shaking happenings, hecatombs of slaughtered men; sledge-hammer strokes of Fate and Destiny. Sudden descents of long-suspended swords upon anointed heads. Tragedies, calamities, dazzling adventures, murders and massacres, high deeds of patriotism, stirring deeds of heroism, wakening admiration, pity or terror. Who shall marvel that into this whirlpool of great events the Mysterious Disappearance of A Well Known British Commanding Officer (as recorded by the Press under the above and similar headings) dropped with as little sensation as the fall of a pair of binoculars from an aviator's hand.

"Staying at Kerr's Arbour, N.B."—I quote from one of the newspaper paragraphs, "the officer, a well-known personality in Society, possessing a great record of distinguished service with the famous Tweedburgh Regiment of Infantry, left the house at which he was an honoured guest, after the funeral of Sir Philip Forbis, which he had attended in the morning, and has not been since heard of. It transpires that Colonel Yaill had intended to walk to Cauldstanes Station, for the purpose of taking a late afternoon train to the junction of Carlisle. He had ordered his luggage to be forwarded to his London Club on the morning following, and carried with him nothing but a trench-coat and a walking-stick. The calamity which has again befallen the 'Tweedburghs' since the appointment of Colonel E. A. Yaill to command the regiment, will be fresh in the sympathetic memory of every reader. On September 1915, Colonel Yaill made his way to the front-line trenches through a blizzard of German H.E. and finding of the few living men left in them not one unwounded, took over and carried on the Telephone and Wireless Communications with Brigade and Divisional H.Q. until for the second time the dug-out containing the installations was blown in by a High Velocity shell. Severe shock was sustained by the gallant officer, who was discovered later, alive but quite dazed, and taken to Hospital. Since then he has successfully undergone treatment at the B—— Base Hospital Camp, which he quitted little more than a week ago, with a convalescent discharge. To add to the strange interest, and thicken the mystery of the case, it has transpired that on the morning he left the Hospital Camp at B—— the missing officer was married to a young and attractive lady, by name Miss Lucy Burtonshaw, serving with her Red Cross Unit at the B—— Base Convalescent Camp, as a certified nurse. Up to the present we can only record that whether the disappearance of Colonel Yaill may be ascribed to foul play, or a sudden loss of memory, no clue has been discovered up-to-date which throws any light upon his whereabouts. At his country home, 'The Grange,' Scraefell, N. Cumberland, his sisters, the Misses Olive and Isabella Yaill, are in the utmost distress and anxiety regarding his probable fate. At his Club The Services, in Pall Mall, no communication has been received from him, nor can his brother, Mr. Anthony Yaill, K.C., or Sir Arthur Ely, head of the eminent firm of Ely and Ely, for many years solicitors to the Yaill family, supply any information whatever concerning the missing officer."

Private John Hazel, returned to the bosom of his family at Campden Hill, read this, or a similar paragraph, in the morning Wire, and somewhere towards forenoon of the same day, received a telegram, the perusal of which gave him another unexpected thrill. It ran as follows:

"Can you come? In great anxiety. Katharine Forbis Kerr's Arbour T.O. Cauldstanes Tweedburgh N.B."

He had written a brief, business-like note from the Cross Keys Hotel on the day of his return from her father's funeral, taking leave of Miss Forbis, repeating his offer of service, and enclosing an address from whence, in case of need, he might always be communicated with. Strangely soon the call had come. Strangely natural, as in the run of long-accustomed things it seemed to be responding to the appeal, to answer by the messenger waiting the reply:

"Thank you. Coming by next train."

He pitchforked a few necessaries into a battered suit-case, left a pencilled note upon the lid of Mrs. Hazel's large, responsible Red Cross work-basket—for his mother now invariably left home directly after breakfast, for the Work Rooms in Mayfair—where, in the delectable company of Duchesses—she spent the hours in the manufacture of Life-Saving Waistcoats for the Fleet, and felt Hospital slippers, until six-thirty. Consuming luncheon, carried in a plated box, and rigorously relegated to such forms of nourishment as may without reproach be assimilated by patriotic British digestive organs in War-time; taking a frugal tea on the scene of activity; and returning at seven to partake of a dinner of generous succulence. Having thus discharged his duty as a son, John departed by taxi for King's Cross, catching the very next express leaving for the North....

The room he had previously occupied at the Cross Keys was vacant. He stepped into its queer conglomeration of ancient smells, and the glass-eyed society of the birds and beasts and fishes in their musty cases, and it might have been that he had never gone away, but that Mrs. Govan in person served his supper in the clammy coffee-room, a part-knitted khaki-coloured sock, bristling with steel knitting-needles, tucked under a stout arm, and the ball bulging the pocket of her apron of black silk.

"Eh, dear!" Mrs. Govan had ceased to address John as "Private" since she had realised his somewhat indeterminate yet undeniable connection with "the family" at Kerr's. "Eh, Mr. Hazel! but this is grievous! ... And to think that I met Cornel Yaill wi' the meir an' cart the vera' nicht he cam' down to atten' the Funeral. Gin' auld Sir Philip cud have kent! But Providence was mercifu'. And sair it has irkit me to think o' Miss Forbis a' alane there at Kerr's, like the last aipple on the strippit tree, as I hae said to Govan, an' telegrams rattlin' ower the wires wi' 'Reply Paid' to the lave o' them—from a' the warld and's wife, beggin' an' prayin' till her: 'Darling Katharine, let us come to you, or if not, winna you come to us,' and gettin' answer: 'A thousand thanks, but no. Lovingly, Katharine.' An' sae, when I e'en kent she had sent for ye, I juist drew a free sough."

Evidently there had been a serious leakage from the Cauldstanes Telegraph Office. John mentally registered the evidence as Mrs. Govan continued:

"Ye'll have haird the latest news o' Cornel Yaill, dootless?"

"Has he been found?" her guest inquired, eliciting the shrill disclaimer:

"Na, na! We'se hae the Police traipsin' in an' out the bar makin' their inquiries—an' the wee laddies in the short breeks—the Boy Scouts I suld say! scoorin' ower the face o' the lan', but neither bone nor feather o' the man hae they fand for a' their pains! And mair nor me an' Govan thinks," she pursed her lips mysteriously, "that it'll be no' for's ain guid when they rin the Cornel doon—wherever's his hidie-hole! Weel free o' siccan a mislaird rogue Miss Forbis may coont hersel! Marriet on a stranger wumman—faugh!—an' the bauld, traipsin' craitur huntin' him doon, un' telegrams to the verra door o' Kerr's Arbour. 'Have knowledge whaur ye are. Return instantly, or I will follow. Your wife, Lucy Yaill.' Set her up for a shameless hussy!—an' the brawest leddy in Tweedshire—ay', an' the haill o' Scotland—wi' grand, gentlemen many a ane etchin' to pit a ring on the white hand o' her—"

Mrs. Govan broke off in the midst of her tirade with a sense of genuine alarm. For the blazing black eyes under the heavy brows of John Hazel were sternly set upon her; and the great hooked nose—"siccan glowering e'en, an' siccan a hawk's neb!—eneuch to fricht a body!" seemed fraught with threatenings of doom to come. He said in his deep voice:

"Miss Forbis will hardly thank you for your praise of herself personally, if you couple with it such confoundedly libellous abuse of her nearest and dearest friend."

"Guidsake! ... I'm sure I never thocht.... To be sure naething is kenned for certain.... Ye'll keip it frae Miss Forbis, sir, if I said onything to offend! ..." and the flurried woman bumped down the dish upon the cloth and vanished, leaving John Hazel wondering why on earth he had stuck up for the man.

He slept with the stuffed birds and beasts that night, and next morning, after breakfast, the mare Brownie being under the veterinary for a chill, the old black horse, her stable-companion, having been sent to the blacksmith's for roughing, and Alec Govan's motor-cycle having been requisitioned for the postman's uses—John set out on foot for Kerr's Arbour.

It was piercing cold; the east wind carried the bitter tang of the North Sea, the country lay under a fresh cloak of new-fallen snow, and the chilled thrushes and blackbirds and robins huddled disconsolately in the cropped hedges, and the low bushes and plumps of ivy swaddling old tree-stumps in the plantations by the roadside. As John Hazel's long active legs left the miles behind—what was a road ankle-deep in snow to a Territorial who had wintered in Flemish trenches!—he wondered somewhat as to the nature of the service Katharine Forbis would require at his willing hands.

Help, it might prove, in some further efforts to gain intelligence of the man who had vanished so suddenly.... Who could not be traced, nor ever would be, until the body should be found.... For Edward Yaill was dead, most certainly. Once Katharine Forbis had showed you plainly she despised you, how could you bear to live any more? Yaill had had that much of manhood left in him. So he had gone out with a definite purpose,—and in some dense plantation, or lonely granite quarry, thick-draped with curtains of bramble, had shot himself; creeping well in under the growths to be securely hidden, and died—and there an end of him....

Odd how those miserable grey eyes, with their haunting stare of agony, kept rising up before John Hazel, as he tramped over the hog-backed Roman road over which how many old dead-and-gone Forbis of Kerr's had led their bow and spearmen against the Picts, or Viking pirates from the wild North Sea; or pricked forth to the Wars of Balliol or Bruce—or set out in state and pageantry, with fair ladies in painted litters, or on gaily-caparisoned palfreys—to the Court of the Scots' King at Stirling or Edinburgh. And he wondered at the strange, impersonal love he felt for them, so brave, so bold, so tender, so gallant and gracious—from the Roman Prætor of Alexandria—who had given the black onyx ring to his (John Hazel's) ancestor—down to Sir Rupert the Cavalier, and the fine old General and the lost Julian, and Katharine....

Ah, Katharine! ... Again he saw her noble face irradiated by the glow and glamour, the mysterious beauty that transfigure even a plain woman when she loves with all her soul.

And then the face of Yaill, with its anguish and despair, rose up before him clearer than ever. He heard the compassionate voice of the V.A.D. woman saying:

"His wretched, wretched eyes! ... I hope I'm not going to dream of them! Oh! there must be something to be said for a man who looks like that! ..."

Suppose the man were innocent—the luckless sport of horrible circumstances! ... Had John Hazel been of Scottish blood, he would have said, "I'm fey." Being what he was, he said vigorously, "I'm a bally idiot!" and continued tramping along the snowy road.

Past the hollow way, crossed by a strip of ice, where the snow on the overhanging trees was thawing in long drips and splashes, and the benumbed birds showed more active signs of life. Out of the hollow way, on the left a dense plantation, on the opposite side to, and about a quarter of a mile below the iron gate of the entrance to the Kerr's Arbour private road.

XXV

A whistle shrilled near by, keen, sharp and silvery. John Hazel stiffened at the sound, as a seasoned soldier will. But nothing was in sight but a wee tow-headed laddie, "a kid" John would have called him—in a ragged suit of moleskins, cut down from adult-sized garments, who perched on the topmost round of the hog-backed stile leading into the plantation, and blew a shining whistle, from which a lanyard hung.

The small boy saw John start, and thrilled with secret exultation. To own a silver whistle and have no one to admire you is really little better than having none at all. So he blew again, lustily, with one eye on the big black "soger," and John Hazel pulled up steaming, and passed the time of day....

"Who are you, you queer little beggar, and where did you get that whistle?" he began.

At this the small boy scrambled down from the gate, and came to the roadside. He was a freckled child of eight or so, with wide gaps where first teeth had retired from the conflict, and a nose that sadly needed wiping, and broken festering chilblains on his swollen ears and hands. But his sharp blue eyes were bright on the stranger's as he answered:

"I am nae no beggar ava, but Meggy Proodfoot's wee laddie. An' I fand the bonny whistle in yonner woodie the morn."

By the jerk of the cracked and swollen thumb John guessed "woodie" meant plantation. He said, blowing out his long brown cheeks, and scowling with mock ferocity:

"That's a real soldier's whistle, not a thing for a kid to play with. You should give it to your daddy. He's a soldier, I suppose?"

The small boy returned, grinning:

"I dinna ken—for my daddie is no' a kirk daddie. Some say he maun be Keeper Todd, but my mother says it's no'! She's thinkin' he's the engineer that cam' wi' the steam-thrasher,—an' she ca's me a puir come-by-chance when she has a drappy on. I'm no mindin'!" The freckled face turned up to John's grinned hardily:

"Give me hold of that whistle a minute, you infantile philosopher," said John Hazel, and took it in his hand. It bore the silver hall-mark,—was an officer's signal-whistle. On the butt was engraved in clear fine letters:

"E. A. Yaill (R.C.) Lieut. Col. R. Tweedburgh Infantry Regt."

Here was the clue. Was the secret hidden in that plantation? John Hazel's face became so grim that it terrified the boy.

"Gie me my whustle back, man, an' let me gang awa' hame, noo! Ye'll no tak it fra' me?" he stuttered, blinking back the tears.

"I must take it from you, for I know the man who lost it. But I'll give you half-a-crown instead, to buy another," said John.... "You'll like the new one awfully!" ... John added as the coin changed owners. "And I'll give you another sixpence for sweeties if you'll tell me what else you found in the wood."

"Naething at a' but a bit o' broon cloth—soger's cloth like yon—" A stubby finger pointed at John's sleeve—"stickin' oot o' a tod's howe, an' the bit white string near by."

"You mean the lanyard. Well, then—"

"Eh, then I pu'ed the wee bit string an' the siller whustle cam' oot wi't, an' sae I took the whustle an' ran awa' to pley. An' when I saw ye comin' I thocht ye were the Man. Noo gie me the bawbee!"

"You mean the sixpence! Tell me about the Man you mean,—and earn a shilling instead."

"Ay! The Man was dressed like yoursel is—but grand, like an officer, wi' gowd on his bonnet an' sleeves, an' mair ribbons on his breast. No the day's day, but back in the week, I'm thinkin' it was Monunday!—I seen him comin' doon the road, an' he fleyt me wi' his een."

"He scared you with his eyes? What did you do then?"

"I bude to rin awa' at first, because 'twas gettin' fell mirk-like. An' sair I wantit my tea and lardy-piece. But I didna' rin ower far. I muntit the fence an' keeked roun' a buss, an' saw him loup in ower. An' he gaed intil the woodie, an' cam' oot nae mair!"

Come By Chance pointed with a chilblained hand to the stile of the plantation, and brought the hand deftly back to show its empty palm. The shilling having followed the half-crown into a pocket of the cut-down corduroys:

"Hae ye anither?" the recipient demanded avidly.

"No, but I might give twopence more to hear how the Man came out."

"He didna!"

A shadow seemed to fall on the brightness of the snow, and the wind's bite grew keener. John Hazel echoed:

"Didn't come out? Are you quite sure?"

"Ay, yea! for though I hing aboot to see, he showed nae bone nor feather. An' at lang last—when I'se fell hungert for my piece—an' fain to rin hame to my mither—anither man louped oot intil the road, an' cam' alang by."

"How do you know it wasn't the Man?"

"Because he was no' braw like the ither! He had nae gowd on his bonnet, an' his claithes were hamely like my daddie's,—or they wad be, gin my mither wad own that my daddie was Keeper Todd."

John Hazel suddenly knew that the chill shadow had passed, and that the sun was shining. And he tossed another shilling to Come By Chance, saying:

"There's another bob for you, you queer little rascal. Cut before I change my mind and want the money back!"

And as the tow-headed took to his chilblained heels, revealing in his hurried flight that his shirt-tail hung out through a ragged hole at the back of his corduroys, John Hazel jumping the hog-backed stile, dived into the plantation. Something told him that he would come out much wiser than he went in.