PART II. (continued 3)

After that an unknown room; strange, but kindly faces bending over a bed on which I lay, my own voice repeating always, 'Hildred—Cuthbert—little Jock, good-bye,' until my brain seemed to turn round with the weary words.

The thread of memory breaks there.

I find myself again, crossing a moor on an autumn evening. The heather is in bloom still, and looks purple-red in the low rays of the sun. The wide heath, rising and falling like the waves of the sea, stretches on to join the sky. Poised high aloft, on quivering wings, a sky-lark sings its cloud-song. And far away, backed by the golden sunset, there rises the spire of a little church, with a village clustering round it. I am bound there. There is a pack on my shoulders, for I am a pedlar, and am beginning to get the name you have all called me by for so many years. I am Wandering Willie. In those days I had little heart to care what I became. My life seemed to be over. I little thought how long it would yet last.

But it has not been a sad one, though its story, such as it is, ended on the day when I looked my last on the mist-covered towers of Wyncliffe.

The sharp edge of sorrow wears down with time. Peace, the evergreen, grows where joy once blossomed. The road-side flowers bloom fresh and fair, though the garden has been left behind. I would not have things otherwise than as they are. I would not have my youth back, though all I once longed for so passionately were granted with it.

Youth can rarely say I am content, as I can. Young limbs must breast the mountain side, and I have gained the top.

Hildred and Cuthbert lived long and happily. It was some years before I let Cuthbert know where I was. Then immediately he came to me. After that we saw each other every now and then; and though meeting seldom, we were yet friends and brothers, as we had always been. There never was another secret between us. Hildred long before had told her husband all the story of his four years of absence.

But I never went back to Wyncliffe until I was an old man.

It was after an illness that I had, during which my thoughts turned constantly to Hildred. A longing for her presence, that had been stilled for many years, woke up once more and drew me towards her.

When next Cuthbert came to see me I went back with him to Wyncliffe. As in a dream, nay rather, as one returning from the dead, I saw again the once familiar places—the grey church, the lime-trees, the village-green, where they were playing cricket just as they used in my day. No one knew the old man. All the faces that I met were strange to me; some only bore a dim ghostly likeness to people I had known.

Once or twice Cuthbert told me the name of a passer-by, as we went along slowly under the lime-trees.

That was Jock Clifford's son, with the bat over his shoulder, a young man, fair and ruddy, but twice as old as his father was when I last saw him. From one of the cottages a child ran out, a brown-eyed toddling little girl, who came towards Cuthbert with a scream of pleasure, and called him grandfather. 'Our boy Will's little lass,' said Cuthbert, raising her on to his shoulder. He called to a woman passing by and bade her come and see an old friend. She came with the hesitating look of one who is told to speak to a stranger. 'You do not know him, Phillis,' Cuthbert said.

Was that Phillis, Hildred's little niece, the laughing rosy child that I remembered? Could this be her?

My heart failed me. The day that I belonged to had indeed passed away. I could not bear to see Hildred grown strange to me like the rest.

It was not that I should love the altered face less, far from it. But I had carried the young bright image of my one love for so long in my heart, I could not bear to lose it.

For those who lived with her, each line, each change, must have grown dear. To me they would be strange, and I feared lest afterwards I might never be able to call back again the gracious presence that had cheered my lonely life.

So, as twilight was over before we reached the Castle, I begged Cuthbert to leave me by the old well, and to bring Hildred to me there, that, in the darkness, I might hold her hand and hear her voice once more, then go my way, and still think of her without one shadow on her face that time or care had thrown.

Cuthbert, willing to do my pleasure though he but half understood me, obeyed my wish.

It was not for long that he left me alone, yet in those few minutes my whole life seemed to pass before me. Near me, above the well, were the old carved words of the promise I had once doubted. It had been too hard for me to make out when I was a child—it was too dark to read it now; yet even in this world it had been fulfilled. That cup of cold water given a life-time ago, had in no wise lost its reward. Cuthbert and Hildred had been happy. And for me, when I was left alone, God Himself drew nigh and was my Friend; though there had been some darkness on my way, the Light of lights, ever brightening, was shining on it.

Thinking thus, I saw that a figure came towards me swiftly through the darkness.

I took the hands she held out to me in my own, and heard her say, 'Willie, welcome home.'

Just for a few moments the weight of years was lifted off our heads, and Hildred and I were boy and girl once more.

We did not say much, nor did I stay long with her. I was content to have been near her, and to have listened to her voice. We parted presently, with a blessing spoken quietly, as befitted those who had once loved each other well, but whom God in His good providence had parted, and who never looked to meeting in this world again. And I went away.

So the two faces I have loved the most, Hildred's and my mother's, never grew old for me, but shine on me still, and are for ever young, for ever fair.

And I think that when I see them next they will be fairer yet, for they will have 'put on immortality.'