have been braver,
and her spirit more defiant. But she knew she was forgiven. The
feeble ray emitted from the lamp in the far-off gable was the
beacon of her forgiveness--the proof that love's fire still burned
brightly. This it was that daunted her: she feared the scorch of
its healing flame.

She had travelled far, having crossed the moors from Burnt Gap,
climbing the ridge as the heavens began to kiss the earth with the
peace of sunset. A lingering glory was then haunting the summits
and crests and cairn-crowned hills that shut in the quiet of
Rehoboth and forming an almost impassable rampart to those who,
from the farther side, sought its shelter ere the close of day. As
she then lifted her eyes to these many-coloured fires lighted by
His hand who setteth His glory in the heavens, they had seemed to
burn in wrath; while the great moors, dark in the foreground,
raised themselves like barriers--uplands of desolation, across
which no path of hope stretched its trend for returning feet.

As the girl climbed the Scar Foot the western sky was toning down
to grays, while beyond, and seen through an oval-shaped rift in
their sombre colours, lay a distant streak of amber that, moment
by moment, slowly disappeared under the closing lids of evening
cloud--the eye of weary day wooed to slumber by the hush of
illimitable sweeps of moor. Even so would Amanda fain have closed
her eyes and sunk to rest amid the purple clouds of heather that,
like a great sky, lay for miles around her feet.

Passing through Nockcliffe plantation, a half-mile of woodland
that straggled along the steep sides of a clough, a drop of rain
fell between the branches and coursed down her cheek--a cheek
fevered from want of tears, and flaming with a sense of shame.
Then a low wind blew--a mere sob, but so preludious, so
prophetic!--followed by a silence that discovered, as never
before, the sense of her own loneliness, and in which she heard
the tread of her own light footfall over the moss and herbage of
the path she travelled.

Emerging from the plantation, an angry gust, laden with cold
drops, dashed itself in her face, and she knew from the
weather-lore which she, as a child of the hills, had learned in
past years, that a wild night was between her and the house whose
shelter she sought in her despair.

Phenomenally rapid was the onrush of the storm. At first the rain
fell in short and sudden showers, driven from angry clouds eager
for some atmo