 CHAPTER 42 OF SILVIA'S LOVERS Philip took possession of the two rooms which had belonged to the dead Sergeant Dobson. They were finished sufficiently for every comfort by the trustees of the hospital. One little fragments of ornament, some small articles picked up in distant countries, a few tattered books, remained in the room as legacies from their former occupant. At first the repose of the life and the place was inexpressibly grateful to Philip. He had always shrunk from encountering strangers, and displaying his blackened and scarred countenance to them, even where such disfigurement was most regarded as a mark of honour. In censor-pulkers he met none but the same set day after day, and when he had once told the tale of how it had happened and submitted to their gaze, it was over for ever, if he so minded. The slight employment his garden gave him. There was a kitchen-garden behind each house, as well as the flower plot in front, and the daily arrangement of his parlour and chamber were, at the beginning of his time of occupation, as much bodily labour as he could manage. There was something stately and utterly removed from all Philip's previous existence in the forms observed at every day's dinner, when the twelve beadsmen met in a large quaint hall, and the warden came in his college cap and gown to say the long Latin grace which wound up with something very like a prayer for the soul of Sir Simon Bray. It took some time to get a reply to ship-letters in those times, when no one could exactly say where the fleet might be found. And before Dr Pennington had received the excellent character of Stephen Freeman, which his son gladly sent an answer to his father's inquiries, Philip had become restless and uneasy in the midst of all this peace and comfort. Waiting alone over his fire in the long winter evenings, the scenes of his past life rose before him, his childhood, his aunt Robson's care of him, his first going to foster shop in Munchshaven, Hater's bankfong, and the spelling lessons in the bright-worn kitchen there, Kinraid's appearance, the miserable night of the Cornish party, the farewell he had witnessed on Munchshaven's sand, the press gang, and all the long consequences of that act of concealment. Poor Daniel Robson's trial and execution, his own marriage, his child's birth. And then he came to that last day at Munchshaven, and he went over and over again the torturing details, the looks of contempt and anger, the words of a loathing indignation, till he almost brought himself, out of his extreme sympathy with Sylvia, to believe that he was indeed the wretch she had considered him to be. He forgot his own excuses for having acted as he had done, though these excuses had at one time seemed to him to wear the garb of reasons, after long thought and bitter memory came some wonder. What was Sylvia doing now? Where was she? What was his child like? His child as well as hers. And then he remembered the poor foot-saw wife and the little girl she carried in her arms that was just the age of Bella. He wished he had noticed that child more, that a clear vision of it might rise up when he wanted to picture Bella. One night he had gone round this mill-wheel-circle of ideas, till he was weary to the very marrow of his bones. To shake off the monotonous impression, he rose to look for a book amongst the old-tattered volumes, hoping that he might find something that would sufficiently lay hold of him to change the current to his thoughts. There was an old volume of Peregrine Pickle, a book of sermons, half an army list of 1774, and the seven champions of Christendom. Philip took up this last which he had never seen before. In it he read how Sir Guy, Earl of Warwick, went to fight the pain of him in his own country, and was away for seven long years, and when he came back his own wife, Phyllis, the Countess in her castle, did not know the poor travel-worn hermit who came daily to seek his doll of bread that her hands, along with many beggars, and such poor. But at last, when he lay a dying in his cave in the rock, he sent for her by a secret sign known but to them twain, and she came with great speed for she knew it was her lord who had sent for her, and they had many sweet and holy words together before he gave up the ghost, his head lying on her bosom. The old story known to most people from their childhood was all new and fresh to Philip. He did not quite believe in the truth of it, because the fictitious nature of the histories of some of the other champions of Christendom was too patent, but he could not help thinking that this one might be true, and that Guy and Phyllis might have been as real flesh and blood long, long ago was as he and Sylvia had even been. The old room, the quiet moonlit quadrangle into which the crossbarred casement looked, the quaint aspect of everything that he had seen for weeks and weeks, all this predisposed Philip to dwell upon the story he had just been reading as a faithful legend of two lovers whose bones were long since dust. He thought that if he could thus see Sylvia, himself unknown, unseen, could live at her gate so to speak, and gaze upon her and his child, some day too, when he lay a dying he might send for her and in soft words of mutual forgiveness breathe his life away in her arms, or perhaps, and so he lost himself and from thinking passed on to dreaming. All night long Guy and Phyllis, Sylvia and his child passed in and out of his visions. It was impossible to make the fragments of his dreams cohere, but the impression made upon him by them was not the less strong for this. He felt as if he were called to Munchshaven, wanted at Munchshaven, and to Munchshaven he resolved to go, although when his reason overtook his feelings he knew perfectly how unwise it was to leave a home of peace and tranquility and surrounding friendliness to go to a place where nothing but want and wretchedness awaited him unless he made himself known. And if he did, a deeper want, a more woeful wretchedness, would in all probability be his portion. In the small oplong of looking-glass hung against the wall, Philip caught the reflection of his own face, and laughed scornfully at the sight. The thin hair lay upon his temples in the flakes that potoked long ill health. His eyes were the same as ever, and they had always been considered the best feature in his face, but they were sunk in their orbits and looked hollow and gloomy. As for the lower part of his face, blackened, contracted, drawn away from his teeth, the outline entirely changed by the breakage of his jawbone. He was indeed a fool if he thought himself fit to go forth to win back that love which Sylvia had foresworn. As a hermit and a beggar he must return to Munchshaven and fall perforce into the same position which Guy of Warwick had only assumed. But still, he should see his phyllis, and might feast his sad hopeless eyes from time to time with the sight of his child. His small penchant of six pence a day would keep him from absolute want of necessaries. So that very day he went to the warden and told him, he thought of giving up his share in the bequest of Sir Simon Bray. Such a relinquishment had never occurred before in all the warden's experience, and he was very much inclined to be offended. I must say that for a man not to be satisfied as a beadsman of sense and polkers argues a very wrong state of mind and a very ungrateful heart. I am sure, sir, it's not from any ingressitude, for I can hardly feel thankful to you and to Simon and to Madame and the young ladies and all my comrades in the hospital, and I never expect to be either so comfortable or so peaceful again. But what can you have to say against this place, then? Not but, but there are always plenty of applicants for every vacancy. Only I thought I was doing a kindness to a man out of Harry's company, and you'll not see Harry either. He's got his leave in March. I'm very sorry. I should like to have seen the left tenant again. But I cannot rest any longer so far away from people I once knew. Ten to one, they're dead, or removed or something or other by this time, and it'll serve you right if they are. Mind, no one can be chosen twice to be a beadsman of sense or polkers. The warden turned away, and Philip, an easy at staying, disheartened at leaving, went to make his few preparations for setting out once more on his journey northwards. He had to give notice of his change of residence to the local distributor of pensions, and one or two farewells had to be taken, with more than usual suddenness at the necessity. For Philip, under his name of Stephen Freeman, had attached some of the older beadsmen a good deal to him, from his unselfishness, his willingness to read to them, and to render them many little services, and perhaps as much as anything, by his habitual silence, which made him a convenient recipient of all their garrulousness. So before the time for his departure came, he had the opportunity of one more interview with the warden, of a more friendly character than that in which he gave up his beadmanship. And so far it was well, and Philip turned his back upon sense or polkers, with his sore heart partly healed by his four months' residence there. He was stronger, too, in body, more capable of the day after day walks that were required of him. He had saved some money from his allowance's beadsmen and from his pension, and might occasionally have taken an outside place on the coach, had it not been that he shrank from the first look of every stranger upon his disfigured face. Yet the gentle, wistful eyes, and the white and fogless teeth always did away with the first impression, as soon as people became a little acquainted with his appearance. It was February when Philip left sense or polkers. It was the first week in April when he began to recognise the familiar objects between York and Munchshaven. And now he began to hang back, and to question the wisdom of what he had done, just as the warden had prophesied that he would. The last night of his two hundred mile walk, he slept at the little inn at which he had been enlisted nearly two years before. It was by no intention of his that he rested at that identical place. It was drawing on, and in making as he thought a shortcut, he had missed his way, and was famed to seek shelter where he might find it. But it brought him very straight face to face with his life at that time, and ever since. His mad, wild hopes, half the result of intoxication as he now knew, all dead and gone. The career then, freshly opening, shut up against him now. His youthful strength and health changed into premature infirmity, and the home and the love that should have opened wide its doors to console him for all. Why, in two years death might have been busy, and taken away from him his last feeble chance of the faint happiness of seeing his beloved without being seen or known of her. All that night, and all the next day, the fear of Sylvia's possible death overclouded his heart. It was strange that he had hardly ever thought of this before. So strange that now, when the terror came, it took possession of him, and he could almost have sworn that she must be lying dead in Munchshaven churchyard. Or was it little Bella, that blooming lovely babe whom he was never to see again? There was the tolling of mournful bells and the distant air to his disturbed fancy, and the cry of the happy birds, the plaintive bleating of the new-dropped lambs, were all omens of evil import to him. As well as he could, he found his way back to Munchshaven, over the wild heights and moors he had crossed on that black day of misery. Why he should have chosen that path he could not tell. It was as if he were led, and had no free will of his own. The soft clear evening was drawing on, and his heart beat thick and then stopped, only to start again with fresh violence. There he was, at the top of the long steep lane that was in some parts a literal staircase leading down from the hilltop into the high street, through the very entry of which he had passed when he shrunk away from his former and his then present life. There he stood, looking down once more at the numerous irregular roofs, the many stacks of chimneys below him, seeking out that which had once been his own dwelling, who dwelt there now. The yellow gleams grew narrower, the evening shadows broader, and Philip crept down the lane a weary, woeful man. At every gap in the close-packed buildings he heard the merry music of a band, the cheerful sound of excited voices. Still he descended slowly, scarcely wondering what it could be, for it was not associated in his mind with the one pervading thought of Sylvia. When he came to the angle of junction between the lane and the high street he seemed plunged all at once into the very centre of the bustle, and he drew himself up into a corner of deep shadow from whence he could look out upon the street. A circus was making its grand entry into Monkshaven with all the pomp of colour and of noise that it could muster. Trumpeters in party-coloured clothes-red first, blaring out triumphant discord. Next came a golden scarlet chariot, drawn by six piebald horses, and the windings of this team through the torturous narrow street were pretty enough to look upon. In the chariots sat kings and queens, heroes and heroines, or what were meant for such. All the little boys and girls running alongside of the chariot envied them, but they themselves were very much tired and shivering with cold in their heroic pomp of classic clothing. All this Philip might have seen, did see in fact, but he did not one jot. Almost opposite to him, not ten yards apart. Standing on the raised step at the well-known shop-door was Sylvia, holding a child, a merry dancing child, up in her arms to see the show. She too, Sylvia, was laughing for pleasure and for sympathy with pleasure. She held the little Bella aloft that the child might see the gaudy procession the better and the longer, looking at it herself with red lips apart and white teeth gancing through, then she turned to speak to someone behind her. Coulson, as Philip saw the moment afterwards, his answer made her laugh once again. Philip saw it all. Her bonny, careless looks, a pretty materially form, her evident ease of mind and prosperous outward circumstances. The years that he had spent in gloomy sorrow amongst wild scenes on land or by sea, his life in frequent peril of a bloody end, had gone by with her like sunny days. All the more sunny because he was not there. So bitterly thought the poor disabled marine as weary and despairing he stood in the cold shadow and looked upon the home that should have been his haven, the wife that should have welcomed him, the child that should have been his comfort. He had banished himself from his home. His wife had foresworn him. His child was blossoming into intelligence and witting of any father. Wife and child and home were all doing well without him. What madness attempted him, dither. An hour ago, like a fanciful fool, he had thought she might be dead, dead with sad penitence for her cruel words at her heart, with mournful wonder at the unaccounted for absence of her child's father preying on her spirits and in some measure causing the death he had apprehended. But to look at her there where she stood, it did not seem as if she had had an hour's painful thought in all her blooming life. Aye, go into the warm hearth, mother and child, now the gay cavalcade has gone out of sight and the chill of night has succeeded to the sun's setting. Husband and father steal out into the cold dark street and seek some poor cheap lodging where you may rest your weary bones and cheat your more weary heart into forgetfulness in sleep. The pretty story of the Countess Phyllis, who mourned for her husband's absence so long, is a fable of old times, or rather say Earl Guy never wedded his wife, knowing that one she loved better than him was alive all the time she had believed him to be dead. Kester had come to pay Sylvia a visit. As the earliest friend she had, and also as one who knew the real secrets of her life, Sylvia always gave him the warm welcome, the cordial words, and the sweet looks in which the old man delighted. He had a sort of delicacy of his own, which kept him from going to see her too often, even when he was stationary at Monkshaven. But he looked forward to the times when he allowed himself this pleasure, as a child at school looks forward to its holidays. The time of his service at Hader's Bank had, on the whole, been the happiest in all his long monotonous years of daily labour. Sylvia's father had always treated him with the rough kindness of fellowship. Sylvia's mother had never stinted him in his meat, or grudged him his share of the best that was going, and once when he was ill for a few days, in the loft above the cow-house. She had made him posits, and nursed him with the same tenderness which he remembered his mother showing to him when he was a little child, but which he had never experienced since then. He had known Sylvia herself, as bud, and sweet promise of blossom, and just as she was opening into the full-blown rows. And, if she had been happy and prosperous, might have passed out of the narrow circle of Kester's interests, one sorrow after another came down upon her pretty innocent head, and Kester's period of service to Daniel Robson, her father, was tragically cut short. All this made Sylvia the great centre of the faithful herdsman's affection, and Bella, who reminded him of what Sylvia was when first Kester knew her, only occupied the second place in his heart, although to the child he was much more demonstrative of his regard than to the mother. He had dressed himself in his Sunday best, and although it was only Thursday, had first alled his Saturdays shaving, he had provided himself with a paper of humbugs for the child, humbugs being the North Country term for certain lumps of toffee well-flavoured with peppermint, and now he sat in the accustomed chair, as near to the door as might be, in Sylvia's presence, coaxing the little one, who was not quite sure of his identity, to come to him by opening the paper parcel, and letting its sweet contents be seen. She's like they, and yet she favours her fave, that said he. And the moment he had uttered the incautious words he looked up to see how Sylvia had taken the unpremeditated, unusual reference to her husband. His stealthy glance did not meet her eye, but though he thought she had coloured a little, she did not seem offended as he had feared. It was true that Bella had her father's grave thoughtful dark eyes, instead of her mother's grey ones, out of which the childlike expression of wonder would never entirely pass away. And as Bella slowly and half distrustfully made her way towards the temptation offered her, she looked at Kester with just her father's look. Sylvia said nothing in direct reply. Kester almost thought she could not have heard him, but by and by she said, You'll have heard how Kinrayed, who's a captain now and a grand officer, has gone and got married. Nay, said Kester in genuine surprise, he never has for sure. Aye, but he has, said Sylvia, and I'm sure I did not see why he shouldn't. Well, well, said Kester, not looking up at her for he caught the inflections and the tones of her voice. He were a fine sterren chap, yawn, and he were all as for due and summit, and when he fund as he couldn't have one thing as he'd said his mind on, I reckon he thought he might put up with another. It'd be no putting up, said Sylvia. She were staying at Bessie Dawson's, and she come here to see me. She's as pretty a young lady as you'd see in a summer's day, and a real lady too with a fortune. She didn't speak two words while bringing in her husband's name, the captain, as she called him. And she come to see thee, said Kester, cocking his eye at Sylvia with the old shrewd look. That was summit queer, weren't it? Sylvia readened a good deal. He's too fous to have spoken to her on me, into old way, as he used for to speak to me. I were not to her but Philip's wife. And what to Dickens had she to do with Philip, asked Kester in intense surprise, and so absorbed in curiosity, that he let the humbugs all fall out of the paper upon the floor, and the little Bella sat down, plump, in the midst of treasures, as great as those fabled to exist on Tom Tiddler's ground. Sylvia was again silent, but Kester, knowing her well, was sure that she was struggling to speak, and bided his time without repeating his question. She said, and I think her tale will true, though I cannot get to to rights on it. Think on it as I will, as Philip saved her husband's life somewhere near about to Jerusalem. She would have it that to captain, for I think on never call him can raid again, was in great battle, and were near upon being shot by to French, when Philip, our Philip, come up and went right into the fire of the guns, and saved her husband's life, and she spoke as if both she and the captain were more beholden to Philip than words could tell, and she come to see me, to try and get news on him. It's a queer kind of story, said Kester, meditatively. I should have thought, as Philip were more likely to have given him a shove into the thick in it, than to help him out of the scrape. Nay, said Sylvia, suddenly looking straight at Kester, you're out there. Philip had a deal of good in him, and I did not think as he'd have gone and married another woman so soon, if he'd have been in can raid's place. And you've never heard on Philip's sinny left, asked Kester after a while. Never, not but what she told me, and she said that to captain made inquiry for him right and left, as soon after that happened as might be, and could hear never word about him, no one had seen him, or known his name. You've never heard of his going for to be a soldier, persevered Kester. Never, I told you once, it weren't like Philip to think of such a thing. But thou might have been thinking on him at times in all these years, bad as he behaved himself, he were to father of thy little one. What did to think he had been a gait on when he left here? I didn't know, I were known so keen on thinking on him at first, I tried to put him out on my thoughts all together, for it made me like mad to think how he'd stood between me and that other. But I'd begun to wonder and to wonder about him, and to think I should like to hear as he were doing well. I reckon I thought he were in London, or he'd been that time of four, you know, and had always spoke as if he'd enjoyed his sale, tolerable, and then Mollie Brunton told me, on to other one's marriage, and somehow it gave me a shake in my heart, and I began for to wish I hadn't said all of them words in my passion, and then that fine young lady come with her story, and I've thought a deal on it since, and my mind has come out clear, Philip's dead, and it were his spirit has come to others' help in his time of need. I've heard fethers say his spirits cannot rest in their graves for trying to undo the wrongs they've done in their bodies. Them's my conclusions, said Kester Salomly. I was faint for to hear what were your judgments first, but them's the conclusions I come to as soon as I heard a tale. Let alone that one thing, said Sylvia, he were a good kind man. It were a big deal on a one thing, though, said Kester. It just spoiled your life, my poor lass, and might have gone near to spoil in Charlie Kinraids, too. Men takes a deal more nor women to spoil their lives, said Sylvia bitterly. Not a make a man. I reckon, lass, Philip's life were pretty well on for being spoiled out after he left here, and it were, maybe, a good thing he got rid on it so soon. I wish I'd just had a few kind words with him. I do, said Sylvia, almost on the point of crying. Come, lass, it's as ill moanin' after what's past, as it'd be for me to feel my eyes were weepin' after the humbugs as this little wench-avine has grubbed up whilst ween been talkin' while there's not one of them left. She's a sad, spoiled little puss, said Sylvia, holding out her arms to the child who ran into them, and began patting her mother's cheeks and pulling at the soft brown curls tucked away beneath the matronly cap. Mami spoils her, and Hester spoils her. Granny Rose doesn't spoil me, said the child with a quick, intelligent discrimination, interrupting her mother's list. No, but Jeremiah Foster does above a bit. He'll come in from to bank, Kester, and ask for her almost every day, and he'll bring her things in his pocket, and she's so foul, she always goes straight to peep in, and then he shifts Tappeler to toy into another. Eh, but she's a little false one, half devouring the child with her kisses, and he comes and takes her walk, oftentimes, and he goes as slow as if he were quite an old man to keep pace with Bella's steps. I often run upstairs and watch him out with a window. He doesn't care to have me with him. He's so faint to have to child-alter himself. She's a Bonniean, for sure, said Kester, but not so pretty as thou was Sylvia. I've never told thee what I come for, though, and it's about time for me to be goin'. I'm off, too, to Cheviot's tomorrow mornin' to fetch home some sheep, as Jonas Blundell has purchased. It'll be a job a better nor two months, I reckon. It'll be a nice time a year, said Sylvia, a little surprised at Kester's evident discouragement at the prospect of the journey or absence. He had often been away from Monkshaven for a longer time, without seeming to care so much about it. Well, you'll see, it's a bit hard upon me for to leave my sister. She, as is to widow-woman, where I put up when I'm at home. Things is main and dear. Four pound loaves is at sixteen pence, and there's a deal a talk on a famine into land, and whaton'er paid for my victual and to bed, and to lean to a helped-downed woman a bit. And she's sadly down into mouth, for she cannot hear on a lodger for to take my place. For, ah, she's moved, or to other side, it to bridge for to be nearer to new buildings. And to grand new walk there makin' round to cliffs, thinkin' she'd be likelier to pick up a labourer, as would be glad on a bed near his work. I'd a like to set her a gate, with a responsible lodger before I'd a left, for she's just so soft-hearted, any scamp may put upon her, if he know but gets howled on her blind side. Can I help her, said Sylvia, in her eager way? I should be so glad, and I have a deal of money by me. Name alas, said Kester, thou mightn't go off so fast, it were just what I feared on it tellin' me. I've left her a bit of money, and I'll make shift to send her more. It's just a kind word to keep up her heart when I'm gone as I want. If thou'd step in and see her for time to time, and cheer her up a bit with talkin' to her on me, I'd take it very kind, and I'd go off with a lighter heart. Then I'm sure I'll do it for you, Kester. I never justly felt like myself when you're away, for I'm lonesome enough at times. She and I will talk all to better about you, for both on us grieve an' after you. So Kester took his leave, his mind set at ease by Sylvia's promise to go and see his sister pretty often during his absence in the North. But Sylvia's habits were changed since she, as a girl at Hader's Bank, liked to spend half her time in the open air, running out perpetually without anything on to scatter crumbs to the poultry, or to take a piece of bread to the old cart-horse, to go up to the garden for a handful of herbs, or to clamber to the highest point around to blow the horn which summoned her father and kester home to dinner. Living in a town where it was necessary to put on hat and cloak before going out into the street, and then to walk in a steady and decorous fashion, she had only cared to escape down to the freedom of the seashore until Philip went away, and after that time she had learnt so to fear observation as a deserted wife that nothing but Bella's health would have been a sufficient motive to take her out of doors. And as she had told Kester, the necessity of giving the little girl a daily walk was very much lightened by the great love and affection which Jeremiah Foster now bore to the child. Ever since the day when the baby had come to his knee, allured by the temptation of his watch, he had apparently considered her as in some sort belonging to him. And now he had almost come to think that he had a right to claim her as his companion in his walk back from the bank to his early dinner, where a high chair was always placed ready for the chance of her coming to share his meal. On these occasions he generally brought her back to the shop door when he returned to his afternoon's work at the bank. Sometimes, however, he would leave word that she was to be sent for from his house in the new town as his business at the bank for that day was ended. Then Sylvia was compelled to put on her things and fetch back her darling, and accepting for this errand she seldom went out at all on weekdays. About a fortnight after Kester's farewell call, this need for her visit to Jeremiah Foster's arose, and it seemed to Sylvia that there could not be a better opportunity of fulfilling her promise and going to see the widow Dobson, whose cottage was on the other side of the river, low down on the cliffside, just at the bend and rush of the full stream into the open sea. She set off pretty early in order to go there first. She found the widow with her house placed tidied up after the midday meal, and busy knitting at the open door, not looking at her rapid clicking needles, but gazing at the rush and recession of the waves before her, yet not seeing them either, rather seeing days long past. She started into active civility as soon as she recognized Sylvia, who was to her as a great lady, never having known Sylvia Dobson in her wild childish days. Widow Dobson was always a little scandalized at her brother Christopher's familiarity with Mrs. Hepburn. She dusted a chair which needed no dusting and placed it for Sylvia, sitting down herself on a three-legged stool to mark her sense of the difference in their conditions, for there was another chair or two in the humble dwelling. And then the two fell in to talk, first about Kester, whom his sister would persist in calling Christopher, as if his dignity as her elder brother was compromised by any familiar abbreviation, and by and by she opened her heart a little more. I could wish, as I learned right of hand, said she, for of that fore to tell Christopher, as might set his mind at ease. But, you see, if I wrote him a letter, he couldn't read it. So I just comfort myself with thinking nobody need learn writing, unless then got friends as can read, but I reckon he'd have been glad to hear as I've gotten a lodger. Here she nodded her head in the direction of the door opening out of the house-place into the lean-to, which Sylvia had observed on drying near the cottage, and the recollection of the mention of which by Kester had enabled her to identify Widow Dobson's dwelling. He's a bed yonder the latter continued, dropping her voice. He's a queer look and type, but I don't think as he's a badden. When did he come, said Sylvia, remembering Kester's account of his sister's character, and feeling as though it behoved her, as Kester's confidant on his head, to give cautious and prudent advice? Eh, a matter of a semite ago, I'm known good at mind in time. He's paid me his rent twice, but then he were keen to pay a forehand. He'd come in one night, and sat him down before he could speak. He were so done up, he'd been on tramp this many a day, I reckon. Can you give me a bed, says he, panting, like after a bit. A chap as I met near here says as you've got a lodging for to let. I, says I, I have that, but your man pay me a shilling a week for it. Then my mind misgive me, for I thought he hadn't a shilling into world, and yet if he hadn't, I should just again him to bed ought a same. I'm not one as can turn a dog out if he comes to me weary to his life. So he outs with a shilling, and lays it down on the table about a word. I'll not trouble you long, says he. I'm one as his best outer to world, he says. Then a thought, as I'd been a bit hard upon him, and says I, I'm a widow woman, and one as has getten but few friends. For you see our low about our Christopher's going away north, so I'm forced like to speak hard to folk. But I've made myself some stir about for my supper, and if you'd like to share and share about with me, it's but putting a step more water to it, and God's blessing will be on it, just as same as if to her meal. So he ups with his hand up for his iron, and says not a word. At last he says, Mrs, says he. Can God's blessing be shared by a sinner? Wanted to devils children, says he. For to scripture says he's to father allies. So our puzzled lack, and at length, that says, Thelman asked a person that, I'm but a poor faint-hearted widow woman. But I've always had God's blessing somehow. Now abethink me, and I'll share it with thee as far as my will goes. So he rakes his hand across the table, and mutters some at as he grips mine. I thought it was scripture, as he said. But I'd need all my strength just then for to lift a pot off to fire. It were to first little I'd tasted since morn, for to famine comes down like stones onto head of us poor foe. And all I said were just, come along chap, and far too, and God's blessing be on him as he's most. And since that day him and me's been as thick as thieves, only he's never told me not of who he is or where he comes from. But I think he's one of them poor colliers, as has gotten brunt into cold pits. For to be sure his face is all black with fire marks, and the late days he's tain to his bed, and just lies there sighing, for one can hear him plain as day-late through to bitter partition way. As proof of this, a sigh, almost agron, startled the two women at this very moment. Poor fellow, said Sylvia in a soft whisper. There's more sore hearts into a world than one reckons for. But after a while she bethought her again of Kester's account of his sister's softness, and she thought that it behoved her to give some good advice. So she added in a sterner harder tone. Still, you say you know not about him, and tramps his tramps ought a world over, and you're a widow, and it behoves you to be careful. I think I'll just send him off as soon as he's a bit rested. You say he's plenty of money? Nay, I never said that. I know not about it. He pays me a forehand, and he pays me down for whatever I've a-getten for him. But that's but little. He's known up to his little, though I've made him some broth as good as I could make him. I wouldn't send him away till he was well again if I were you, but I think you'd better be rid on him, said Sylvia. It would be different if your brother were amongst Haven. As she spoke she rose to go. Widow Dobbson held her hand in hers for a minute, and then the humble woman said, You'll known be vexed when he misses, if I cannot find in my heart to turn him out till he wants to go his sell, for I wouldn't like to vex you for Christopher's sake, but I know what it is for to feel for friendless folk, and choose what may come on it. I cannot send him away. No, said Sylvia, why should I be vexed? It's no business on mine. Only I should send him away if I was you. He might go large where there was men folk who know to ways at tramps and are up to them. Into the sunshine went Sylvia. In the cold shadow in the miserable trail place sighing, she did not know that she had been so near to him towards whom her heart was softening, day by day. First Words It was the spring of 1800. Old people yet can tell of the hard famine of that year. The harvest of the autumn before had failed. The war and the corn lords had brought the price of corn up to a famine rate. A much of what came into the market was unsound, and consequently unfit for food, yet hungry creatures bought it eagerly, and tried to cheat disease by mixing the damp, sweet, clammy flour with rice or potato meal. Rich families denied themselves pastry, and all unnecessary and luxurious uses of wheat in any shape. The duty on hair powder was increased, and all these palliatives were but as drops in the ocean of the great want of the people. Philip, in spite of himself, recovered and grew stronger, and, as he grew stronger, hunger took the place of loathing dislike to food. But his money was all spent. And what was his poor pension of six pence a day in that terrible year of famine? Many a summer's night he walked for hours and hours round the house which once was his, which might be his now, with all its homely, blessed comforts, could he but go and assert his right to it. But to go with authority, and in his poor maimed guise assert that right, he had need be other than Philip Hepburn. So he stood in the old shelter of the steep crooked lane, opening onto the hill out of the market place, and watched the soft fading of the summer's eve into night, the closing of the once familiar shop, the exit of good comfortable William Coulson going to his own home, his own wife, his comfortable plentiful supper. Then Philip, though no police in those days and scarcely an old watchman in that primitive little town, would go round on the shady sides of streets, and, quickly glancing about him, crossed the bridge looking on the quiet rippling stream, the grey shimmer foretelling the coming dawn over the sea, the black masts and rigging of the still vessels against the sky. He could see with his wistful eager eyes the shape of the windows, the window of the very room in which his wife and child slept unheeding of him, the hungry, broken-hearted outcast. He would go back to his lodging, and softly lift the latch of the door. Still more softly, but never without an unspoken grateful prayer, pass by the poor sleeping woman who had given him a shelter, and her share of God's blessing, she, who, like him, knew not the feeling of satisfied hunger. And then he laid him down on the narrow pallet in the lean-tow, and again gave Sylvia happy lessons in the kitchen at Hater's Bank, and the dead were alive, and Charley Kinray, the spectioner, had never come to trouble the hopeful gentle-piece. For Widow Dobson had never taken Sylvia's advice. The trump known to her by the name of Freeman, that in which he received his pension, lodged with her still, and paid his meagre shilling in advance, weekly, as shilling was meagre in those hard days of scarcity. A hungry man might easily eat the produce of a shilling in a day. Widow Dobson pleaded this to Sylvia as an excuse for keeping her lodger on. To a more calculating head, it might have seemed a reason for sending him away. You see, Misses, said she apologetically to Sylvia one evening, as the latter called upon the poor widow before going to fetch little Bella. It was now too hot for the child to cross the bridge in the full heat of the summer sun, and Jeremiah would take her up to her supper instead. You see, Misses, there's not as many as a take him in for a shilling when it goes so little way. Or if they did, they'd take it out on him some other way, and he's not getting much else, I reckon. He calls me Granny, an vast mystery, and if he's the 10-year-younger, no me. But he's getting a fine appetite of his own, choose how young he may be. And I can see, as he could eat a deal more, no, he's getting money to buy, and it's few ask him, Matt Victor, go farther, no me. There, Misses, but you may trust me, I'll send him off when times is better. But just now be sending him to his death, for I have plenty and to spare, thanks be to God and your boniface. So Sylvia had to be content with the knowledge that the money she gladly gave to Kester's sister went partly to feed the lodger who was neither labourer nor neighbour, but only just a tramp, who, she feared, was preying on the good old woman. Still, the cruel famine cut sharp enough to penetrate all hearts, and Sylvia, an hour after the conversation recorded above, was much touched on her return from Jeremiah Foster's with a little merry chattering baller at seeing the feeble steps of one whom she knew by description must be Widow Dobson's lodger, turn up from the newly cut road, which was to lead to the terrace walk around the North Cliff, a road which led to no dwelling but Widow Dobson's. Trump and vagrant he might be in the eyes of the law. But whatever his character, Sylvia could see him before her in the soft dusk creeping along over the bridge, often stopping to rest and hold by some support, and then going on again towards the town, to which she and happy little bellow were wending. A thought came over her. She had always fancied that this unknown man was some fierce vagabond, and had dreaded Lest in the lonely bit of road between Widow Dobson's cottage and the people's highway. He should fall upon her and rob her, if he learned that she had money with her. And several times she had gone away without leaving the little gift she had intended, because she imagined that she had seen the door of the small chamber in the lean-to open softly while she was there, as if the occupant, whom Widow Dobson spoke of as never leaving the house before dusk, excepting once a week, were listening for the chink of the coin in her little leaven purse. Now that she saw him walking before her with heavy-language steps, this fear gave place to pity. She remembered her mother's gentle superstition, which had prevented her from ever sending the hungry empty away, for fear lest she herself should come to need bread. Lassie, said she's a little bellow, who held a cake which Jeremiah's housekeeper had given her tight in her hand. Yampamandie is hungry. Will bellow give him her cake, and mother will make her another tomorrow, twice as big? For this consideration, and with the feeling of satisfaction which a good supper not an hour ago gives, even to the hungry stomach of a child of three years old, Bella, after some thought, graciously assented to the sacrifice. Sylvia stopped the cake in her hand, and turned her back to the town, and to the slow wayfarer in front. Under the cover of her shawl, she slipped a half-crown, deep into the crumb of the cake, and then restoring it to little Bella, she gave her her directions. Mami will carry Bella, and when Bella goes past the poor man, she shall give him the cake over Mami's shoulder. Poor man is so hungry, and Bella and Mami have plenty to eat and to spare. The child's heart was touched by the idea of hunger, and her little arm was outstretched, ready for the moment her mother's hurried steps, took her brush and passed the startle trembling Philip. Poor man, eat this. Bella not hungry. They were the first words he had ever heard his child utter. The echoes of them rang in his ears as he stood, endeavouring to hide his disfigured face, by looking over the parapet of the bridge down upon the stream, running away towards the ocean, into which his hot tears slowly fell, unheeded by the weeper. Then he changed the intention with which he had set out upon his nightly walk, and turned back to his lodging. Of course the case was different with Sylvia. She would have forgotten the whole affair very speedily, if it had not been for little Bella's frequent recurrence to the story of the hungry man, which had touched her small sympathies with the sense of an intelligible misfortune. She liked to act the dropping of her bun into the poor man's hand as she went past him, and would take up any article near her in order to illustrate the gesture she had used. One day she got hold of Hester's watch for this purpose, as being of the same round shape as the cake, and though Hester, for whose benefit the child was repeating the story in her broken language for the third or fourth time, tried to catch the watch as it was intended that she should, she being the representative of the hungry man for the time being. It went to the ground with a smash that frightened the little girl, and she began to cry at the mischief she had done. Don't cry, Bella, said Hester. Never play with watches again. I didn't see them at mine, but I'll stop them in time. But I'll take it to Old Dali's aunt's key-side, and maybe you'll soon set it to rights again. Only Bella must never play with watches again. Never no more! Promised a little sobbing child, and that evening Hester took her watch down to Old Dali's. This William Dali was the brother of the gardener of the rectory, the uncle to the sailor who had been shot by the press-gang years before, and to his bedridden sister. He was a clever mecanition, and his skill as a repairer of watches and chronometers was great among the sailors, with whom he did a very irregular sort of traffic, conducted, often without much use of money, but rather on the principle of barter, they bringing him foreign coins and odd curiosities picked up on their travels in exchange for his services to their nautical instruments or their watches. If he had ever had capital to extend his business, he might have been a rich man, but it is to be doubted whether he would have been as happy as he was now, in his queer little habitation of two rooms, the front one being both shop and workshop, the other serving the double purpose of bedroom and museum. The skill of this odd-tempered, shabby old man was sometimes sought by the jeweler who kept the more ostentatious shop in the high street, but before Dali would undertake any tickle-piece of delicate workmanship for the other, he sneered at his ignorance and taunted and abused him well. Yet he had soft places in his heart, and Hester Rose had found her way to one by her patient enduring kindness to his bedridden niece. He never snarled at her as he did at too many, and on the few occasions when she had asked him to do anything for her, he had seemed as if she were conferring the favour on him, not he on her, and only made the smallest possible charge. She found him now sitting where he could catch the most light for his work, spectacles on nose, and microscope in hand. He took a watch and examined it carefully without a word in reply to her. Then he began to open it and take it to pieces, in order to ascertain the nature of the mischief. Suddenly he heard her catch a breath of the checked sound of surprise. He looked at her from above his spectacles. She was holding a watch in her hand, which he had just taken up off the counter. What's a miss with thee now? said Dali. Hester never seen a watch of that mac-a-fore, or is it them letters on back as is so wonderful? Yes, it was those letters, that interlaced old-fashioned cipher, that Z.H. that she knew of old stood for Zachary Hepburn, Philip's father. She knew how Philip valued this watch. She remembered having seen it in his hands the very day before his disappearance, when he was looking at the time and his annoyance at Sylvia's detention in her walk with baby. Hester had no doubt that he had taken this watch as a matter of course away with him. She felt sure that he would not part with this relic of his dead father on any slight necessity. Where then was Philip? By what chance of life or death had this his valued property found its way once more to Munch's Haven? Where did you get this? She asked, in as quiet as a manner as she could assume, sick with eagerness as she was, to no one else would Dali have answered such a question. He made a mystery of most of his dealings, not that he had anything to conceal, but simply because he delighted in concealment. He took it out of her hands, looked at the number marked inside, and the maker's name, Natto Gent York, and then replied, A man brought it me yesterday at night for, for to sell it. It's a matter of forty years old. Natto Gent has been dead, and in his grave, pretty nigh as long as that, but he did his work well when he were alive, and so I gave him as brought it for to sell about as much as it were worth the good coin. I tried and first it barter in line, but he wouldn't bite, like enough he wanted food. Many a wonders nowadays. Who was he? gasped Hester. Bless woman, how should I know? What was he like? How old? Tell me. My lass, there was something else to do with me eyes, and go peering into men's faces at dusk light. But you must have had light for to judge about the watch. There how sharp we are, with a candle close to my nose, but I didn't tack it up for to gaze into his face. That wouldn't be manners to my thinking. Hester was silent. Then Dali's heart relented. If your soul set upon knowing that Fella was, I could maybe put you on his tracks. How? said Hester eagerly. I do want to know. I want to know very much and for a good reason. Well then, I'll tell you. He's a queer tyke, that one is. I'll be bound. He was so pressed for brass. Yet he outs with a good half-crown, all wrapped up in paper, and he acts as me to make a hole in it. Says I. It's marring good king's coin. It after I've made a hole in it, it'll never pass current again. So he mumbles, and mumbles, but for all that it must needs be done, and he's left it here, and it's called for it tomorrow, Ian. Oh, William Dali! said Hester, clasping her hands tight together. Find out who he is, where he is, anything, everything about him, and I will so bless you. Dali looked at her sharply, but with some signs of sympathy on his grave face. My woman! he said, I could have wished as you'd never seen at watch. His poor frankness worked, thinking too much on one of God's creatures. But I'll do the bidding. He continued in a lighter and different tone. I'm a cute old badger, and need be. Come for the watch in a couple of days, and I'll tell you all as I've learnt. So Hester went away, her heart beating with the promise of knowing something about Philip, how much, how little in these first moments she dared not say even to herself. Some sailor newly landed from distant seas might have become possessed of Philip's watch in far off latitudes. In which case Philip would be dead. That might be. She tried to think that this was the most probable way of accounting for the watch. She could be certain as to the positive identity of the watch being in William Dali's possession. Again it might be that Philip himself was near at hand, was here in this very place, starving as too many were for insufficiency of means to buy the high-priced food. And then her heart burnt within her, as she thought of the succulent, comfortable meals which Sylvia provided every day, nay, three times a day, for the household in the market place, at the head of which Philip ought to have been. But his place knew him not. For Sylvia had inherited her mother's talent for housekeeping, and on her, in Alice's decrepitude and Hester's other occupations in the shop, devolved the cares of due provision for the somewhat heterogeneous family. And Sylvia! Hester groaned in heart over the remembrance of Sylvia's words. I can never forgive him the wrong he did to me. That night when Hester had come and clung to her, making the sad, shameful confession of her unreturned love. What could ever bring these two together again? Could Hester herself ignorant of the strange mystery of Sylvia's heart, as those who are guided solely by obedience to principle must ever be of the clue to the actions of those who are led by the passionate ebb and flow of impulse? Could Hester herself—oh! how should she speak? How should she act if Philip were near? If Philip were sad and in miserable estate! Her own misery at this contemplation of the case was too great to bear, and she sought her usual refuge in the thought of some text, some promise of scripture, which should strengthen her faith. With God all things are possible! Said she, repeating the words as though to lull high anxiety to rest. Yes, with God all things are possible. But, oftentimes, he does his work with awful instruments. There is a peacemaker whose name is Death. Hester went out the evening of the day after that on which the unknown owner of the half-crown had appointed to call for it again at William Darley's. She had schooled herself to believe that time and patience would serve her best. Her plan was to obtain all the knowledge about Philip that she could in the first instance, and then, if circumstances allowed it, as in all probability they would, to let drop by drop of healing, peacemaking words, and thoughts fall on Sylvia's obturant, unforgiving heart. So Hester put on her things and went out down towards the old quay side on that evening after the shop was closed. Poor little Sylvia, she was unforgiving, but not obturant to the full extent of what Hester believed. Many a time since Philip went away had she unconsciously missed his protecting love, when folks spoke shortly to her, when Alice scolded her as one of the non-elect, when Hester's gentle gravity had something of severity in it, when her own heart failed her as to whether her mother would have judged that she had done well, could that mother have known at all, as possibly she did by this time. Philip had never spoken otherwise than tenderly to her during the eighteen months of their married life, except on the two occasions before recorded, once when she referred to her dream of Kinrade's possible return, and once again on the evening of the day before her discovery of his concealment of the secret of Kinrade's involuntary disappearance. After she had learnt that Kinrade was married, her heart had still more strongly turned to Philip. She thought that he had judged rightly and what he had given as the excuse for his double dealing. She was even more indignant at Kinrade's fickleness than she had any reason to be, and she began to learn the value of such endearing love as Philip's had been, lasting ever since the days when she first began to fancy what a man's love for a woman should be, when she had first shrunk from the tone of tenderness he put into his special term for her, a girl of twelve, little lassie, as he was want to call her. But across all this relenting came the shadow of her vow, like a chill of a great cloud passing over a sunny plain. How should she decide? What would be her duty if he came again, and once more called her wife? She shrank from the possibility with all the weakness and superstition of her nature, and this it was which made her strengthen herself and this it was which made her strengthen herself with the re-unerence of unforgiving words, and shun all recurrence to the subject on the rare occasion when Hester had tried to bring it back, with the hope of softening her heart which to her had appeared altogether hardened on this one point. Now on this bright summer evening, while Hester had gone down to the quayside, Sylvia stood with her out-of-door things on the parlor, rather impatiently watching the sky, full of hurrying clouds and fleshing with the warm tints of the approaching sunset. She could not leave Alice, the old woman had grown so infirm that she was never left by her daughter and Sylvia at the same time, yet Sylvia had to fetch her little girl from the new town where she had been to her supper at Jeremiah Foster's. Hester had said that she should not be away more than a quarter of an hour. Hester was generally so punctual that any failure of hers in this respect appeared almost in the light of an injury to those who had learnt to rely upon her. Sylvia wanted to go and see the widow Dobson and learn when Hester might be expected home. His two months were long past and Sylvia had heard through the fosters of some suitable and profitable employment for him, of which she thought he would be glad to know as soon as possible. It was now some time since she had been able to get so far as across the bridge, and for ought she knew, Hester might already be come back from his expedition to the ship Watts. Hester was come back. Scarce five minutes had elapsed after those thoughts had passed through her mind before his hasty hand lifted the latch of the kitchen door. His hurried steps brought him face to face with her. The smile of greeting was arrested on her lips by one look at him, his eyes staring wide, the expression on his face wild and yet pitiful. The derit, said he, seeing that her things were already on, thought her wanted sore come along. Oh, dear God, my child, cried Sylvia, clutching at the cheer near her, but recovering her eddying senses with the strong fact before her that whatever the terror was, she was needed to combat it. Oi, thy child, said Hester, taking her almost roughly by the arm and drawing her away with him out through the open doors onto the quayside. Tell me, said Sylvia faintly. Yes, she did. Well, she's safe now, said Caster. It's not her. It's him that saved her as Nidio, if even her husband needed a wife. He who? Oh, Philip, Philip, is it your last? Unheeding what spectators might see her movements, she threw up her arms and staggered against the parapet of the bridge they were then crossing. He, Philip, saved Bella? Bella, our little Bella, has got her dinner by my side and went out with Jeremiah as well as could be. I cannot take it in, tell me, Caster. She kept trembling so much in voice and in body that he saw she could not stir without danger of falling until she was calmed. As it was, her eyes became filming from time to time, and she drew her breath in great heavy pants, leaning all the while against the wall of the bridge. It were no illness, Caster began. The little one had gone for a walk with Jeremiah Foster, and he were drawn for to go round to the edge of the cliff, where there is a making to new walk right over to sea. But his bit butt on a path went out, and one was too old, and the other too young for to see the water coming along with great leaps. It always for coming up high against the cliff, and this spring tide, it coming in a terrible big waves. Someone said it's a pasta man sitting on a bit of rock up above. Ah, I don't know, I only know as I heard the great beautiful screech in the air. Ah, what is the risk then, after I'd come in not half an hour at the place. I walked better nor a dozen miles today, and I ran out, and I looked and just on the walk at the turn, with the swish of a wave running back as quick as the mishap into to sea, and old Jeremiah standing like one crazy looking out over into water, and like a stroke of lightning comes a man, and in it a very mist or the great waves like a shot, and then I know it's somethings were in the water, as were nearer death than life, and it seemed to misdoubt me, as that were our Bella, and a shouts and a cries for help, and it goes myself to the very edge of the cliff, and a bids out Jeremiah as was like one beside himself, who died on me, for he were good for nothing else, and abides my time, and when I see his two arms are holding out a little dripping stream in child, a clutch is earned by her waistband, and hulls are to land. She's no one to worse for her bath, all will be bound. I'm on, go let me, said Sylvia, struggling with his detaining hand, which he had laid upon her in the fear that she would slip down to the ground in a faint, so Ash and Gray was her face. Let me, Bella, I'm on to go to her. He let go, and she stood still, suddenly feeling herself too weak to stir. No, if you try a bit to be quiet, I'll lead you along, but your mind be steady and brave last. A lot, if you only let me see Bella, said Sylvia humbly. And you never asked after him as saved her, said Kester reproachfully. I know it's Philip, she whispered, and you said he wanted me, so I know he's safe. And Kester, I think I'm feared on him, and I'd like to gather courage of what I see in him, and a look at Bella would give me courage. It was a terrible time when I saw him last, and I did say, never think on what thou did say, think on what thou will say to him now, for he lies a dyin'. He were dashed against a cliff, and brew store on his innards, afford to men as comb with a boat could kick him up. She did not speak. She did not even tremble now. She set her teeth together, and holding tight to Kester, she urged him on, but when they came to the end of the bridge, she seemed uncertain which way to turn. This way, said Kester. He's been lodging with Sally this nine week, and never a one about the place that know'd him. He bin it to wars, and get in his face brunt. And he was short of food, moaned Sylvia, and we had plenty, and I tried to make your own sisterer turn him out and send him away. Oh, will God ever forgive me? Mothering to herself, breaking her motherings with sharp cries of pain, Sylvia, with Kester's help, reached Widow Dobson's house. It was no longer a quiet, lonely dwelling. Several sailors stood about the door, awaiting in silent anxiety for the verdict of the doctor, who was even now examining Philip's injuries. Two or three women stood talking eagerly, in low voices, in the doorway. But when Sylvia drew near, the men fell back, and the women moved aside as though to allow her to pass, all looking upon her with a certain amount of sympathy, but perhaps with rather more of antagonistic wonder as to how she was taking it. She, who had been living in ease and comfort while her husband's shelter was little better than a hovel, her husband's daily life a struggle with starvation, where so much of the lodger at Widow Dobson's was popularly known, and any distrust of him as a stranger and a tramp was quite forgotten now. Sylvia felt the hardness of their looks, the hardness of their silence, but it was as nothing to her. If such things could have touched her at this moment, she would not have stood still right in the midst of their averted hearts, and murmured something to cast her. He could not hear the words uttered by that hoarse choked voice, until he had stooped down and brought his ear to the level of her mouth. We'd better wait for the doctor to come out, she said again. She stood by the door shivering all over, almost facing the people in the row, but with her face turned a little to the right, so that they thought she was looking at the pathway on the cliffside, a hundred yards or so distant, below which the hungry waves still lashed themselves into high ascending spray. While nearer to the cottage, where their force was broken by the bar at the entrance to the river, it came softly lapping up the shelving shore. Sylvia saw none of all this, though it was straight before her eyes. She only saw a blurred mist. She heard no sound of waters, though it filled the ears of those around. Instead, she heard low whispers, pronouncing Philip's earthly doom. For the doctors were both agreed, his internal injury was of a mortal kind, although as the spine was severely injured above the seat of the fatal bruise, he had no pain in the lower half of his body. They had spoken in so low a tone that John Foster, standing only a foot or so away, had not been able to hear their words, but Sylvia heard each syllable there where she stood outside, shivering all over in the sultry summer evening. She turned round to Kester. I wouldn't go to him. Kester, thou see that no one come in to us when the doctors come out. She spoke in a soft, calm voice, and he, not knowing what she had heard, made some easy conditional promise. Then those opposite to the college door fell back, for they could see the grave doctors coming out, and John Foster, graver, sadder still, following them. Without a word to them, without a word even of inquiry, which many outside thought and spoke of as strange, white-faced, dry-eyed Sylvia slipped into the house out of their sight. And the waves kept lapping on the shelving shore. The room inside was dark, all except a little halo or circle of light made by a dip candle. Willow Dobson had her back to the bed, her bed, onto which Philip had been born in the hurry of terror as to whether he was alive or whether he was dead. She was crying, crying quietly, but the tears downfalling fast as, with her back to the lowly bed, she was gathering up the dripping clothes cut off from the poor, maimed body by the doctor's orders. She only shook her head as she saw Sylvia, spirit-like, steel-in, white, noiseless, and upborn from earth. But noiseless as her step might be, he heard, he recognized, and with a sigh he turned his poor, disfigured face to the wall, hiding it in the shadow. He knew that she was by him, that she had an out-down by his bed, that she was kissing his hand, over which the languor of approaching death was stealing. But no one spoke. At length, he said, his face still averted, speaking with an effort. Little Lassie, forgive me now, I cannot live to see the morn. There was no answer, only a long, miserable sigh, and he felt her soft cheek laid upon his hand, and the quiver that ran through her whole body. I did the accrual wrong, he said at length, I see it now. But I'm a dying man, I think that God will forgive me, and I've sinned against him. Try, Lassie, try, my Sylvie, will thou not forgive me? He listened intently for a moment. He heard through the open window the waves, lapping on the shelving shore. But there came no word from her, only that same long, shivering, miserable sigh, broke from her lips at length. Child, said he, once more, I have made thee my idol, and if I could live my life or again, I would love my God more and thee less, and then I shouldn't have sinned the sin against him. But speak one word of love to me, one little word, that I may know I have departed. Oh, Philip, Philip, she moaned, thus adjured. Then she lifted her head and said, Them were wicked, wicked words as I said, and a wicked vow as I vowed, and Lord God Almighty had taken me at my word. I am sorely punished, Philip, I am indeed. He pressed her hand, he stroke her cheek, but he asked for yet another word. I did the wrong. In my lion heart I forgot to do to thee, as I would have had thee do to me, and I judged kindred in my heart. Thou thoughtest he was faithless and fickle, she answered quickly, and so he were. He were married to another woman, not so many weeks, and after thou went away. Oh, Philip, Philip, and now I had thee back. And dying was the word she would have said, but first the dread of telling him what she believed he did not know, and next her passionate sobs choked her. I know, said he, once more stroking her cheek, and soothing her with a gentle caressing hand. Little lassie, he said, after a while when she was quiet from very exhaustion. I never thought to be so happy again. God, he's very merciful. She lifted up her head and asked wildly, Will he ever forgive me, thank you? I drove you out from your home, and I sent you away to wars, where you might have gotten your death, and when you came back, poor and lone and weary, I told her for to turn you out, for I knew you must be starving in these bad times. I think I should go about among them as nash their teeth forever, while you are where all the tears are wiped away. No, said Philip, turning round his face, forgetful of himself and his desire to comfort her. God pities us, as a father pities her poor, unduring children. The nearer I come to death, the clearer I see him. But you and me have done wrong to each other, yet we can see now how we were led to it. We can pity and forgive one another. I'm getting low and faint, lassie. But thou must remember this. God knows more, and is more forgiving than either you to me, or me to you. I think, and do believe, as we shall meet together before his face. But then I shall have learnt to love thee sick into him, not first, as I have done here upon the earth. Then he was silent, very still. Sylvia knew, widow Dobson had brought it in, that there was some kind of medicine, sent by the hopeless doctors, lying upon the table hard by, and she softly rose and poured it out and dropped it into the half-open mouth. Then she knelt down again, holding the hand feverly stretched out to her, and watching the faint light in the wistful, loving eyes. And in the stillness, she heard the ceaseless waves lapping against the shelving shore. Something like an hour before this time, which was the deepest midnight of the summer's night, Hester Rose had come hurrying up the road to where Kester and his sister sat outside the open door, keeping their watch under the starlit sky, all others having gone away one by one, even John and Jeremiah Foster having returned to their own house, where the little Bella lay sleeping a sound and healthy slumber after her perilous adventure. Hester had heard but little from William Darley, as to the owner of the watch and the half-crown, but he was chagrin at the failure of all his skilful interrogations to elicit the truth, and promised her further information in a few days, with all the more vehemence because he was unaccustomed to being baffled, and Hester had again whispered to herself, patience, patience, and had slowly returned back to her home to find that Sylvia had left it, why she did not at once discover. But growing uneasy as they advancing hours neither brought Sylvia nor little Bella to their home, she had set out for Jeremiah Foster's as soon as she had seen her mother comfortably asleep in her bed, and then she had learnt the whole story bit by bit, as each person who spoke broke in upon the previous narration with some new particular. But from no one did she clearly learn whether Sylvia was with her husband or not, and so she came speeding along the road, breathless, to where Kester sat in a wakeful, mournful silence, his sister's sleeping head lying on his shoulder, the cottage door open both for air, and that there might be help within call if needed, and the dim, slanting colouring of the interior light lying across the road. Hester came panting up too agitated and breathless to ask how much was truth of the fatal, hopeless tale which he had heard. Hester looked at her without a word. Through this solemn momentary silence, the lapping of the ceaseless waves was heard as they came up close on the shelving shore. He, Philip, said she, Kester shook his head sadly, and his wife, Sylvia, said Hester. In there with him, alone, whispered Kester. Hester turned away and wrung her hands together. Oh, Lord God Almighty, said she, was I not even worthy to bring them together at last, and she went away slowly and heavily back to the side of her sleeping mother. But thy will be done was on her quivering lips before she lay down to her rest. The soft grey dawn lightens the darkness of a mid-summer night soon after two o'clock. Philip watched it come, knowing that it was his last sight of day as we reckoned days on earth. He had been often near death as a soldier, once or twice, as when he rushed into fire to save Kinraid. His chances of life had been as one to a hundred, but yet he had had a chance. Now there was the new feeling, the last new feeling which we shall any of us experience in this world, that death was not only close at hand, but inevitable. He felt its numbness stealing up on him, stealing up on him. But the head was clear, the brain more than commonly active in producing vivid impressions. It seemed but yesterday, since he was the little boy at his mother's knee, wishing with all the earnestness of his childish heart to be like Abraham, who was called the friend of God, or David, who was said to be the man after God's own heart, or St. John, who was called the beloved. As very present seemed the day on which he made resolutions of trying to be like them. It was in the spring, and someone had bought cow slips, and the scent of those flowers was in his nostrils now as he lay adying. His life ended his battle spot, his time for being good over and gone. The opportunity once given in all eternity passed. All the temptations that had beset him rose clearly before him. The scenes themselves stood up on their solid materialism. He could have touched the places, the people, the thoughts. The arguments that Satan had urged in behalf of sin were reproduced with the vividness of the present time. And he knew that the thoughts were illusions, the arguments false and hollow, for in that hour came the perfect vision of the perfect truth. He saw the way to escape, which had come along with the temptation. Now the strong resolve of an ardent boyhood, with all a life before it to show the world what a Christian might be. And then the swift, terrible now, when his naked, guilty soul shrank into the shadow of God's mercy seat, out of the blaze of his anger against all who act a lie. His mind was wandering, and he plucked it back. Was this death in very deed? He tried to grasp at the present, the earthly present, fading quickly away. He lay there on the bed, on Sally Dobson's bed, in the house-place, not on his accustomed pallet on the lean-to. He knew that much. And the door was open into the still dusk night, and through the door casement he could hear the lapping of the waves on the shelving shore. Could see the gray dawn over the sea. He knew it was over the sea. He saw what lie unseen behind the poor walls of the cottage. And it was Sylvia who held his hand tight in her warm, living grasp. It was his wife whose arm was thrown around him, whose solving size shook his numb frame from time to time. God bless, in comfort, my darling, he said to himself. She knows me now. All will be right in heaven, in the life of God's mercy. And then he tried to remember all that he had ever read about, God, and all that the blessed Christ, that bring in glad tridings of great joy unto all people, had said of the Father, from whom he came. These sings dropped like balm down upon his troubled heart and brain. He remembered his mother, and how she had loved him. And he was going to a love wiser, tenderer, and deeper than hers. As he thought this, he moved his hands as if to pray. But Sylvia clenched her hold, and he lay still, praying all the same for her, for his child, and for himself. Then he saw the sky reddened with the first plush of dawn. He heard Kester's long, drawn sigh of weariness outside the open door. He had seen widow Dobson pass through long before to keep the remainder of her watch on the bed in the lean-to, which had been his for many and many a sleepless and tearful night. Those nights were over. He should never see that poor chamber again, though it was scarce two feet distant. He began to lose all sense of the comparative duration of time. It seemed as long since the kind Sally Dobson had bent over him with a soft, lingering look before going into the humble sleeping room, as long as it was since his boyhood, when he stood by his mother dreaming of the life that should be his, with the scent of the cow slips tempting him to be off to the woodlands where they grew. Then there came a rush and an eddying through his brain, his soul trying her wings for the long flight. Again he was in the present. He heard the waves lapping against the shelving shore once again. And now his thoughts came back to Sylvia. Once more he spoke aloud in a strange and terrible voice, which was not his. Every second came with efforts that were new to him. My wife, Sylvia, once more, forgive me all. She sprang up. She kissed his poor burnt lips. She held him in her arms. She moaned and said, Oh, look at me, forgive me, me, Philip. Then he spoke and said, Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive each other. And after that the power speech was conquered by the coming death. He lay very still, his consciousness fast fading away, yet coming back in throbs, so that he knew it was Sylvia who touched his lips with cordial. And then it was Sylvia who murmured words of love in his ear. He seemed to sleep at last, and so he did, a kind of sleep. But the light of the red morning sun fell on his eyes, and with one strong effort he rose up, and turned so as once more to see his wife's pale face of misery. In heaven he cried, and a bright smile came on his face as he fell back on his pillow. Not long after Hester came, the little Bella scarce awake in her arms, with the purpose of bringing his child to see him ere yet he passed away. Hester had watched and prayed through the live long night, and now she found him dead, and Sylvia, tearless and almost unconscious, lying by him, her hand holding his, her other thrown around him. Hester, poor old man, was sobbing bitterly, but she not at all. Then Hester bore her child to her, and Sylvia opened wide her miserable eyes, and only stared as if all sense was gone from her. But Bella, suddenly rousing up at the sight of the poor, scarred, peaceful face, cried out, Poor man! Who is so hungry? Is he not hungry now? No, said Hester softly. The form of things are passed away, and he is gone, where there is no more sorrow, and no more pain. But then she broke down into weeping and crying. Sylvia sat up and looked at her. Why do you cry, Hester? She said. You never said you wouldn't forgive him as long as you lived. You never broke the heart of him that loved you, and let him almost starve at your very door. Well, Philip, why Philip tender and true? Then Hester came round and closed the sad, half-opened eyes, kissing the calm brow with a long, farewell kiss. As she did so, her eyes fell on a black ribbon round his neck. She partly lifted it out, to it was hung a half-crowned piece. This is the piece he left at William Dardy's to be bore, said she, not many days ago. Bella had crept to her mother's arms as a known haven in the strange place, and the touch of his child loosened the fountains of her tears. She stretched out her hand for the black ribbon, put it round her own neck, and after a while she said, Live very long, and try very hard to be good all that time. Do you think, Hester, as God will let me to him where he is? Monk Shaven is altered now into a rising bathing place, yet standing near the site of Widow Dobson's house on the summer's night at the ebb of her spring tide, you may hear the waves come lapping up the shelving shore with the same ceaseless, ever-recurrent sound as that which Philip listened to on the pauses between life and death. And so it will be until there shall be no more sea. But the memory of man fades away. A few old people can still tell you the tradition of the man who died in the cottage somewhere about this spot died of starvation while his wife lived in hard-hearted plenty not too good stone throws away. This is the form into which popular feeling and ignorance of the real facts have molded this story. Not long since a lady went to the public baths, a handsome stone building erected on the very site of Widow Dobson's cottage, and finding all the rooms engaged she sat down and had some talk with the bathing woman. And, as a chance, the conversation fell upon Philip Hepburn and the legend of his fate. I knew an old man when I was a girl, said the bathing woman, as could never abide to hear the wife blamed. He would say nothing against the husband. He used to say, as it were not fit for men to be judging, that she had her sword trial, as well as Hepburn himself. The lady asked, what became of the wife? She was a pale, sad woman, all is just in black. I can just remember her when I was a little child, but she died before her daughter was well grown up. And Miss Rose took to Lassie, as had always been like her own. Miss Rose? Hester Rose, how you never heard of Hester Rose, as she founded the almshouses for poor disabled sellers and soldiers on the Horncastle Road. There is a piece of stone in front to say that this building is erected in the memory of P.H., and some folk will have it. P.H. stands for the name of the man that was starved to death. And the daughter? One of the fosters, then, Miss found at the old bank, left her a vasto money, and she were married to a distant cousin of theirs, and went off to settle in America many, and many a year ago.