watch.

'It is by these moments we should date our lives,' he murmured to
himself as he rose; 'they are the only real landmarks.'

It was eight o'clock, and the nurse who was to relieve him had come. The
results of the night for his charge were good: the strength had been
maintained, the pulse was firmer, the temperature lower. The boy,
throwing off his drowsiness, lay watching the rector's face as he talked
in an undertone to the nurse, his haggard eyes full of a dumb friendly
wistfulness. When Robert bent over him to say good-bye, this expression
brightened into something more positive, and Robert left him, feeling at
last that there was a promise of life in his look and touch.

In another moment he had stepped out into the January morning. It was
clear and still as the night had been. In the east there was a pale
promise of sun; the reddish-brown trunks of the fir woods had just
caught it, and rose faintly glowing in endless vistas and colonnades one
behind the other. The flooded river itself rushed through the bridge as
full and turbid as before, but all the other water surfaces had gleaming
films of ice. The whole ruinous place had a clean, almost a festal air
under the touch of the frost, while on the side of the hill leading to
Murewell, tree rose above tree, the delicate network of their wintry
twigs and branches set against stretches of frost-whitened grass, till
finally they climbed into the pale all-completing blue. In a copse close
at hand there were woodcutters at work, and piles of gleaming laths
shining through the underwood. Robins hopped along the frosty road, and
as he walked on through the houses towards the bridge, Robert's quick
ear distinguished that most wintry of all sounds--the cry of a flock of
fieldfares passing overhead.

As he neared the bridge he suddenly caught sight of a figure upon it,
the figure of a man wrapped in a large Inverness cloak, leaning against
the stone parapet. With a start he recognised the squire.

He went up to him without an instant's slackening of his steady step.
The squire heard the sound of some one coming, turned, and saw the
rector.

'I am glad to see you here, Mr. Wendover,' said Robert, stopping and
holding out his hand. 'I meant to have come to talk to you about this
place this morning. I ought to have come before.'

He spoke gently, and quite simply, almost as if they had parted the day
before. The squire touched his hand for an instant.

'You may not