ng
his sheaves with him;' I looked up from the book, and saw you. I was not
surprised when I saw you. I knew you would come, my dear, and saw the
gold sunshine round your head."

She smiled an almost wild smile as she looked up at him. The moon was up
by this time, glittering keen in the frosty sky. He could see, for the
first time now clearly, her sweet careworn face.

"Do you know what day it is?" she continued. "It is the 29th of
December--it is your birthday! But last year we did not drink it--no,
no. My lord was cold, and my Harry was likely to die: and my brain
was in a fever; and we had no wine. But now--now you are come again,
bringing your sheaves with you, my dear." She burst into a wild flood of
weeping as she spoke; she laughed and sobbed on the young man's heart,
crying out wildly, "bringing your sheaves with you--your sheaves with
you!"

As he had sometimes felt, gazing up from the deck at midnight into the
boundless starlit depths overhead, in a rapture of devout wonder at that
endless brightness and beauty--in some such a way now, the depth of this
pure devotion (which was, for the first time, revealed to him) quite
smote upon him, and filled his heart with thanksgiving. Gracious God,
who was he, weak and friendless creature, that such a love should be
poured out upon him? Not in vain--not in vain has he lived--hard and
thankless should he be to think so--that has such a treasure given him.
What is ambition compared to that, but selfish vanity? To be rich, to be
famous? What do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder
than yours, when you lie hidden away under the ground, along with
idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after
you--follows your memory with secret blessing--or precedes you, and
intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar--if dying, I yet live in a tender
heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed
soul still loves and prays for me.

"If--if 'tis so, dear lady," Mr. Esmond said, "why should I ever leave
you? If God hath given me this great boon--and near or far from me, as I
know now, the heart of my dearest mistress follows me, let me have that
blessing near me, nor ever part with it till death separate us. Come
away--leave this Europe, this place which has so many sad recollections
for you. Begin a new life in a new world. My good lord often talked
of visiting that land in Virginia which King Charles gave us--gave his
ancestor