ing on before them, now lost
in shadow, now passing through a bar of light that shone from a
student's window, he wondered at the man's surrender of one who was to
him a treasure-house into which were gathered all the beauty and
mystery and fascination of women. The future held much of uncertainty
for him, but his love was safe.

This final act of the drama, which was, after all, only the centrepiece
of a trilogy, built on a drama acted before Leigh's entrance to the
scene, and promising another in the future, was played more below the
surface than above. Not one tenth of the things that might have been
said was actually spoken; the greater part was unexpressed, perhaps
unexpressible. But to the young astronomer, Nature herself, never
wholly mute, was full of interpretative music. If the wind was ever a
paean of victory, it was such to him as they emerged from the shelter
of the Hall and received the full force of its robust and joyful blast;
if the familiar stars ever sang in their courses, they sang to him now.
From time to time his hand met that of the woman he loved in a clinging
touch, as he turned to help her through a drift that had risen since
she passed that way, and this progress seemed to his warm imagination
an allegory of their future life together.

They neared the end of the maple walk, and the mayor's dark figure
became partially obscured by the bulk of his waiting sleigh. The next
moment he was standing upright within it, arranging the blanket about
him, seeming larger than human against the whiteness beyond. He sank
into his seat and gathered up the reins. They heard him speak to his
horse in his confidential way; there was a cheerful burst of silvery
bells, and the sleigh began to move rapidly down the hill.

As Leigh watched the vanishing figure, his heart was smitten by a keen
regret, for he felt that a man of heroic quality, known only when lost,
was passing out of his life forever.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAYOR OF WARWICK***

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