len bride, hurriedly crossed the footbridge and ran to
the men who were holding the horses. There he placed Dorothy on her feet
and said with a touch of anger:--

"Will you mount of your own will or shall I put you in the saddle?"

"I'll mount of my own will, John," she replied submissively, "and John,
I--I thank you, I thank you for--for--" she stopped speaking and toyed
with the tufts of fur that hung from the edges of her cloak.

"For what, my love? For what do you thank me?" asked John after a little
pause.

"For making--me--do--what I--I longed to do. My conscience would not let
me do it of my own free will."

Then tears came from her eyes in a great flood, and throwing her arms
about John's neck she gave him herself and her heart to keep forever and
forever.

And Leicester was shivering at the stile! The girl had forgotten even the
existence of the greatest lord in the realm.

My wife, Lord Rutland, and I waited in the watch-room above the castle
gates for the coming of Dorothy and John; and when they came--but I will
not try to describe the scene. It were a vain effort. Tears and laughter
well compounded make the sweetest joy; grief and joy the truest happiness;
happiness and pain the grandest soul, and none of these may be described.
We may analyze them, and may take them part from part; but, like love,
they cannot be compounded. We may know all the component parts, but when
we try to create these great emotions in description, we lack the subtle
compounding flux to unite the ingredients, and after all is done, we have
simply said that black is black and that white is white.

Next day, in the morning, Madge and I started for our new home in France.
We rode up the hill down which poor Dolcy took her last fatal plunge, and
when we reached the crest, we paused to look back. Standing on the
battlements, waving a kerchief in farewell to us, was the golden-crowned
form of a girl. Soon she covered her face with her kerchief, and we knew
she was weeping Then we, also, wept as we turned away from the fair
picture; and since that far-off morning--forty long, long years ago--we
have not seen the face nor heard the voice of our sweet, tender friend.
Forty years! What an eternity it is if we tear it into minutes!

L'ENVOI

The fire ceases to burn; the flames are sucked back into the earth; the
doe's blood has boiled away; the caldron cools, and my shadowy friends--so
real to me--whom I love with a passiona