for a night's rest; and warm were the congratulations that welcomed Mrs. Mort when met by the doctor, who, as well as Israel, had received notice of the time of her coming. After a most touching and grateful good-bye to her friends, he took her home. As he set her down in her own house once more, and left her after a little genial chat, and the expression of a still more decided hope of recovery than the London physician had given, she gazed around her as if all that had intervened since she last sat there was a dream. "When would Mr. Mort be home?' she asked the servant, who could tell her nothing, but that she expected he would be late, as he was so very busy. She had tea prepared, but found all appetite had passed away. She must go upstairs to her bedroom. She went there with the girl's aid, and began to open drawers, and sort things, and arrange them in her own fashion where she found any change. There seemed a kind of mania upon her for looking after things she had not seen for many years, and for pausing over them, sometimes putting them to her lips before she put them down. Thus she came upon certain relics of childhood, not David's only, but of the two little ones resting in the churchyard by the wild stream. And she examined them with a strange feeling that somehow they looked altered, and that she was worried about their identity. Then suddenly sitting down, she began to wring her hands, and cry aloud 'Israel, my husband, come!' The cry was answered from below 'Mary!' She heard the heavy step, she rose to meet it, she advanced, but tottered, and was falling, when Israel's arm caught and encircled her, and feeling her grow more and more heavy, carried her to the bed, and lifted her on to it, and then kissed her. 6 What, wife, overcome by the journey! Don't mind! That'll soon pass away. Come, tell me all about it; but I see you are not strong enough to-night. To-morrow then. I am in no mood to eat, so I shall come to bed.' The faintest possible sound came to his ear of 'Israel!' He had moved away, but warned by that sound he turned, and strode to the bed-side, and took one hand in his, while the other slid under her back, and enfolded her waist. 'Israel!' then for some seconds she could say no more, for the under-current of restrained anguish at what she was going to say. 'I-I have seen David-forgive himand me-for-I-am dying-dear-dear husband.' 'No, no, no! a thousand times no! I do forgive him and you. Wife, wife! this is an ill time for me. I can no longer spare you; believe me, I cannot. See, drink this, the cordial !' With shut eyes, she blindly pushed away the proffered glass, then murmured 'Oh, I have so much to say, and-and-Israel-light the candle, it is so dark! Where are you?" The moment she felt his hand, she kissed it passionately, lifted her face heavenward, and seemed silently to struggle with herself. 'Oh God, bless him, and make smooth his path! Oh, dear God, oh, Christ, bless my husband and my Israel heard no more; he covered his eyes, as if ashamed of that which they were revealing. When he uncovered them it was to see his wife's dead features, smiling on him in death. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE WANDERER'S RETURN. ONE dull, misty evening of September, some twelve years later than the period referred to in the beginning of this tale, a young man alighted on the platform of the nearest station to Brynnant ; and although to the porters and other people about he was a stranger where few strangers came, he asked no questions, even while he peered inquisitively into every face he passed, but went away with his travelling bag, as if every inch of the neighbourhood was familiar to him. Not the less, however, did he pause, when he had got out of sight of the station, to enter a field, and ascend a little hillock, and stand there for nearly a couple of minutes; gazing first in one direction, then in another, as if struggling with a double current of thought and emotion, one showing him things and places he had forgotten or never known, the other recognising by sudden gleams objects unseen since childhood, but treasured ever since as precious links, binding past and future together, and which time had partially disguised, so that for a brief space there was doubt, then glad and heartfelt recognition. Every object, however mean or insignificant to others, seemed full of interest for him. At that dingy cottage, with the thatched roof looking in its sodden blackness as if the fingers that put it together must have done their last stroke of work centuries ago, he had once drunk a draught of milk under circummstances that made it seem ever after to him the climax of a boy's felicity in the quenching of thirst. So with the lake of water he can just see gleaming a couple of fields off. That was where he fished for the first time in his life; and, even as he looks, all the boy's delight in his first success returns to him, for he sees another boy there now; he sees the curve of his rod, the dangling quiver of something dark below-he, too, has just caught a fish, perhaps his first. He comes to an apple-tree, and remembers both the delicious apples he got from it, and the cruel beating he received from its owner. Then, for the first time, he feels he forgives him. He soon reaches the town, with its narrow, dark, and dirty streets; unlighted, except from the shop-windows, which do not themselves appear sufficiently brilliant to have any illumination to spare. But the dirt and darkness are for the moment almost pleasant to him as evidences of the true place-the home-and incline him to forget newer tastes and acquired sanitary knowledge. He breathes even the misty, grimy atmosphere with a certain air of satisfaction-though not altogether unconscious of the ugly hue it casts over everything around; for is there not an air of indescribable joyousness in the stream of human life, that seems to bubble and dance through the place? A group of young men are singing finely the March of the Men of Harlech ;' the individuals who pass by hum to themselves some independent snatch of song; jest and laughter fill up the pauses between all other sounds; and through the very centre of the moving, vivacious, but not too crowded mass, come wandering along two young girls, in the very flower of maiden prettiness, which not even their dingy dresses can hide; heeding no one, heeded by none; their arms so gracefully entwined round each other's slender form, their faces so full of simple affectionateness, faith, content, and utter abandonment to the spirit of this evening hour, that the stranger, who stands aside to watch them as they pass, is irresistibly reminded of Shakspeare's charming picture of the two that grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, So with two seeming bodies, but one heart. 'Can this be a colliery population?-why it is an actual idyl of the mine!' So thought the stranger, as with a sigh of reaction from the delight he had felt in it all, he went on to the inn where he had settled to stay for the night, and as if to satisfy and to silence inquisitive folks, he took the first opportunity to let it be known that he had come down as the representative of a well-known London Mine Agency, on business connected with the collieries of the neighbourhood. He retired to his bedroom very early; but again set the tongues of the people who were carousing below him eagerly to work, by walking to and fro while they drank and smoked, and chatted and sang, but still listened between-whiles, as if fascinated, to the continuing creak of the floor above them, and the vibration that the stranger's walk caused through the ill-built house; and which was still continuing when the last lingerer quitted the inn, just after midnight. The stranger was up early, and stood entranced with delight the moment he got outside the town. Already his first impressions had begun to be subjected to analysis, and to suffer in consequence. Could this be the neighbourhood he had, ever since he left it, thought so beautiful? Such had been the burden of his later song, as he fell off to sleep. But now he understood it all. Last night the mountains were invisible, non-existent. Now they were circling everything within the wide scope of his eye-everywhere green, fresh, beautiful, glorious: covered to the very top with fern. Last night he could hear, but not see, the stream running below the grey stone bridge; now it was a delight to look upon it, to gaze into its pure, translucent depths, as it rushed along singing, as of old, the song the hearer remembered so well, and so deeply loved. As he went on-passing the mouths of one lovely valley after another, descending from the mountain heights -as he saw the marsh, the sea, and its shipping with glistening sails-the intervening sand-banks and the little nook where tall reeds had grown so luxuriantly as to present all the appearance of a magnificent crop of wheat ripe for the barvest sickle, he no longer wondered that the |