ent to rest, and mingled themselves with her dreams.
She woke at last sharply and suddenly, thinking she heard the hail
rattling against the windows as it did when Mr. Truelocke preached his
last sermon in our church; but it was not hail that rattled, it was some
one throwing sand and pebbles up at her window to wake her, and then a
voice calling on her name. She sprang up, and, hurrying on some clothes,
she ran down-stairs; for, as she told me, she had no more doubt of its
being Andrew who called, than if it had been broad daylight, and she
could see him standing below the window; and, being too impatient to
unlock any door, she undid the hasp of the nearest casement and climbed
out; and at the same moment hearing a voice again calling softly,
'Althea,' she ran in the direction of the sound, and came upon a man
whom in the starlight she saw to be Andrew indeed; she spoke his name,
holding out both her hands, and he turning at once grasped them in both
his, and so they stood gazing at each other awhile. Then she said, half
sobbing,--

'You come strangely, Andrew--but you come to your own house, and I am
glad that it falls to me to welcome you to it; it lacks a master sadly;'
and she tried to draw him towards the door, telling him she would set
it open if he would tarry a few minutes while she herself climbed in to
do it.

'Alas!' he said, resisting her efforts; 'what do you mean by calling
this my house? is our aunt indeed gone? I had hoped that part of the
message might be a delusion.'

'What message? I sent none, for I knew not where to send, nor did any of
us,' she replied; 'but it is too true that Mrs. Golding is dead these
ten days; and all things are at a stand for lack of your presence. Come
in; do not keep me here in the darkness and the cold.'

'I will not keep thee long,' he said sadly; 'fear it not, Althea. But I
may not come under this roof which thou sayest is mine. I saw the dim
light in your window,' he went on, like one talking in a dream, 'and I
could not bear to pass by and make no sign, as I ought to have done. For
I love thee too well, Althea Dacre, as thou knowest.'

'How can it be too well,' she answered boldly, 'if you do not love me
better than I do you? and therefore come in to your own home, or I will
not believe there is any love in you at all.'

'That's a foolish jest,' said he half angrily. 'I may not cross the
doorstone of this house to-day, Althea; I am forbidden; so hear me say
wha