new performers; the gaze of
manhood is turned on new figures; the limelight of human interest throws
up the coming forces of activity and intellect; while those who
yesterday shone supreme, slowly pass into the penumbra that heralds
eclipse. And who bulk big enough to arrest the eternal march, delay
their own progress from light to darkness, or stay the eager young feet
tramping outward of the dayspring to take their places in the day? Life
moves so fast that many a man lives to see the dust thick on his own
name in the scroll of merit and taste a regret that only reason can
allay.

Fate had denied Sabina Dinnett her brief apotheosis. From dark to dark
she had gone; yet time had purged her mind of any large bitterness. She
looked on and watched Raymond's sojourn in the light from a standpoint
negative and indifferent. The future for her held interest, for she
could not cease to be interested in him, though she knew that he had
long since ceased to be interested in her. From the cool cloisters of
her obscurity she watched and was only strong in opinion at one point.
She dreamed of her son making his way and succeeding in the world; she
welcomed Mr. Churchouse's assurance as to the lad's mental progress and
promise; but she was determined as ever that not, if she could help it,
should Abel enter terms of friendship with his father.

Thus the relations subsisted, while, strange to record, in practice they
had long been accepted as part of the order of things at Bridetown. They
ceased even to form matter for gossip. For Raymond Ironsyde was greater
here than the lord of the manor, or any other force. The Mill continued
to be the heart of the village. Through the Mill the lifeblood
circulated; by the Mill the prosperity of the people was regulated; and
since the master saw that on his own prosperity reposed the prosperity
of those whom he employed, there was none to decry him, or echo a
disordered past in the ear of the well-ordered present.

CHAPTER II

THE SEA GARDEN

Bride river still flowed her old way to her work and came, by goldilocks
and grasses, by reedmace and angelica, to the mill-race and water-wheel.
But now, where the old wheel thundered, there yawned a gap, for the
river's power was about to be conserved to better purpose than of old,
and as the new machines now demanded greater forces to drive them, so
human skill found a way to increase the applied strength of a streamlet.
Against the outer wal