n her
cheeks.

"Oh, my dear!" she cried brokenly. "Oh, my dear!"

CHAPTER XXXIX

HARVEST

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live
as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil,
So much good more . . ."

BROWNING.

"How can you prove it, Garth--Maurice, I mean?"--Selwyn corrected
himself with a smile. "You'll need more than Mrs. Durward's confession
to secure official reinstatement by the powers that be."

The clamour of joyful excitement and wonder and congratulation had spent
itself at last, the Lavender Lady had shed a few legitimate tears, and
now Selwyn voiced the more serious aspect of the matter.

It was Herrick who made answer.

"I have the necessary proofs," he said quietly. He had crossed to a
bureau in the corner of the room, and now returned with a packet of
papers in his hand.

"These," he pursued, "are from my brother Colin, who is farming
in Australia. He was a good many years my senior--and I've always
understood that he was a bit of a ne'er-do-well in his younger days.
Ultimately, he enlisted in the Army as a Tommy, and in that scrap on the
Indian Frontier he was close behind Maurice and saw the whole thing.
He got badly wounded then, and was dangerously ill for some time
afterwards, so it happened that he knew nothing about the court-martial
till it was all over. When he recovered, he wrote to Maurice, offering
his evidence, and"--smiling whimsically across at Kennedy--"received a
haughty letter in reply, assuring him that he was mistaken in the facts
and that the writer did not dispute the verdict of the court. My brother
rather suspected some wild-cat business, so before he went to Australia,
some years later, he placed in my hands properly witnessed documents
containing the true facts of the matter, and it was only when, through
Mrs. Durward, we learned that Maurice had been cashiered from the Army,
that the connection between that and the Frontier incident flashed into
my mind as a possibility. I had heard that the Durwards' name had been
originally Lovell--and I began to wonder if Garth Trent's name had not
been originally"--with a glint of humour in his eyes--"Maurice Kennedy!
Here's my brother's letter"--passing it to Sara, who was standing next
him--"and here's the document which he left in my care. I've had 'em
both locked away since I was sevente