ure sins against chastity cause to
God. He could think but of this one thing, the displeasure God must feel
against Nora and the seducer who had robbed her of the virtue God prized
most in her. He must have said things that he would not have said at any
other time. His brain was on fire that morning, and words rose to his
lips--he knew not whence nor how they came, and he had no idea now of
what he had said. He only knew that she left the church during his
sermon; at what moment he did not know, nor did he know that she had
left the parish till next day, when the children came up to tell him
there was no schoolmistress. And from that day to this no news of her,
nor any way of getting news of her.

His thoughts went to the hawthorn-trees, for he could not think of her
any more for the moment, and it relieved his mind to examine the green
pips that were beginning to appear among the leaves. 'The hawthorns will
be in flower in another week,' he said; and he began to wonder at the
beautiful order of the spring. The pear and the cherry were the first;
these were followed by the apple, and after the apple came the lilac,
the chestnut, and the laburnum. The forest trees, too, had their order.
The ash was still leafless, but it was shedding its catkins, and in
another fifteen days its light foliage would be dancing in the breeze.
The oak was last of all. At that moment a swallow flitted from stone to
stone, too tired to fly far, and he wondered whence it had come. A
cuckoo called from a distant hill; it, too, had been away and had come
back.

His eyes dwelt on the lake, refined and wistful, with reflections of
islands and reeds, mysteriously still. Rose-coloured clouds descended,
revealing many new and beautiful mountain forms, every pass and every
crest distinguishable. It was the hour when the cormorants come home to
roost, and he saw three black specks flying low about the glittering
surface; rising from the water, they alighted with a flutter of wings on
the corner wall of what remained of Castle Hag, 'and they will sleep
there till morning,' he said, as he toiled up a little path, twisting
through ferns and thorn-bushes. At the top of the hill was his house,
the house Father Peter had built. Its appearance displeased him, and he
stood for a long time watching the evening darkening, and the yacht
being towed home, her sails lowered, the sailors in the rowing-boat.
'They will be well tired before they get her back to Tinnic