expect them." So for the last three months or more she had
always set four covers at the table, and Lysbeth did not gainsay her. In
her heart she too hoped that Foy might come.

That very night Foy came, and with him Red Martin, the great sword
Silence still strapped about his middle.

"Hark!" said Lysbeth suddenly, "I hear my son's footsteps at the door.
It seems, Elsa, that, after all, the ears of a mother are quicker than
those of a lover."

But Elsa never heard her, for now--now at length, she was wrapped in
the arms of Foy; the same Foy, but grown older and with a long pale scar
across his forehead.

"Yet," went on Lysbeth to herself, with a faint smile on her white and
stately face, "the son's lips are for the lover first."

An hour later, or two, or three, for who reckoned time that night when
there was so much to hear and tell, while the others knelt before her,
Foy and Elsa hand in hand, and behind them Martin like a guardian giant,
Lysbeth put up her evening prayer of praise and thanksgiving.

"Almighty God," she said in her slow, sonorous voice, "Thy awful Hand
that by my own faithless sin took from me my husband, hath given back
his son and mine who shall be to this child a husband, and for us as for
our country over sea, out of the night of desolation is arisen a dawn of
peace. Above us throughout the years is Thy Everlasting Will, beneath
us when our years are done, shall by Thy Everlasting Arms. So for the
bitter and the sweet, for the evil and the good, for the past and for
the present, we, Thy servants, render Thee glory, thanks, and praise, O
God of our fathers, That fashioneth us and all according to Thy desire,
remembering those things which we have forgotten and foreknowing
those things which are not yet. Therefore to Thee, Who through so many
dreadful days hast led us to this hour of joy, be glory and thanks, O
Lord of the living and the dead. Amen."

And the others echoed "To Thee be glory and thanks, O Lord of the living
and the dead. Amen."

Then, their prayer ended, the living rose, and, with separations done
and fears appeased at last, leant towards each other in the love and
hope of their beautiful youth.

But Lysbeth sat silent in the new home, far from the land where she was
born, and turned her stricken heart towards the dead.

FINIS

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lysbeth, by H. Rider Haggard

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