oss her brow and
eyes,--"you must stay awake."

"I had rather dream," said MacLean shortly. "I have no love for your
schoolmaster."

"He is a wise man," she answered. "Now that I do not like the woods I
listen to him when he comes to the glebe house. If I remember all he says,
maybe I shall grow wise, also, and the pain will stop." Once more she
dropped her chin upon her hand and fell to brooding, her eyes upon the
river. When she spoke again it was to herself: "Sometimes of nights I hear
it calling me. Last night, while I knelt by my window, it called so loud
that I put my hands over my ears; but I could not keep out the sound,--the
sound of the river that comes from the mountains, that goes to the sea.
And then I saw that there was a light in Fair View house."

Her voice ceased, and the silence closed in around them. The sun was
setting, and in the west were purple islands merging into a sea of gold.
The river, too, was colored, and every tree was like a torch burning
stilly in the quiet of the evening. For some time MacLean watched the
girl, who now again seemed unconscious of his presence; but at last he got
to his feet, and looked toward his boat. "I must be going," he said; then,
as Audrey raised her head and the light struck upon her face, he continued
more kindly than one would think so stern a seeming man could speak: "I am
sorry for you, my maid. God knows that I should know how dreadful are the
wounds of the spirit! Should you need a friend"--

Audrey shook her head. "No more friends," she said, and laughed as she had
laughed before. "They belong in dreams. When you are awake,--that is a
different thing."

The storekeeper went his way, back to the Fair View store, rowing slowly,
with a grim and troubled face, while Darden's Audrey sat still upon the
green hillock and watched the darkening river. Behind her, at no great
distance, was the glebe house; more than once she thought she heard Hugon
coming through the bushes and calling her by name. The river darkened more
and more, and in the west the sea of gold changed to plains of amethyst
and opal. There was a crescent moon, and Audrey, looking at it with eyes
that ached for the tears that would not gather, knew that once she would
have found it fair.

Hugon was coming, for she heard the twigs upon the path from the glebe
house snap beneath his tread. She did not turn or move; she would see him
soon enough, hear him soon enough. Presently his black eyes wo