nd threadbare and
narrow-chested, trudging on, head bent, against a spitting rain. The
owner of Flood had been smitten with a sudden compunction, and
dismounting he had walked his horse beside the old man. The living of
Tidswell was in his own gift. It amounted, he remembered, to some L140 a
year. The old man, whose name was Trevenen, had an old wife, to whom Sir
Arthur thought Lady Laura had sometimes sent some cast-off clothes.

Mr. Trevenen had been baptising a prematurely born child in a high
moorland farm. The walk there and back had been steep and long, and his
thin lantern-jawed face shone very white through the wintry dusk.

"You must be very tired," Sir Arthur had said, remembering uncomfortably
the dinner to which he was himself bent--the chef, the wines, the large
house-party.

And Mr. Trevenen had looked up and smiled.

"Not very. I have been unusually cheered as I walked by thoughts of the
Divine Love!"

The words had been so simply said; and a minute afterwards the old
pale-faced parson had disappeared into the dark.

What did the words mean? Had they really any meaning?

"The Divine Love." Arthur Falloden did not know then, and did not know
now. But he had often thought of the incident.

He leaned over, musing, to gather a bunch of hare-bells growing on the
edge of the stream. As he did so, he was conscious again of a sharp pain
in the chest. In a few more seconds, he was stretched on the moorland
grass, wrestling with a torturing anguish that was crushing his life
out. It seemed to last an eternity. Then it relaxed, and he was able to
breathe and think again.

"What is it?"

Confused recollections of the death of his old grandfather, when he
himself was a child, rose in his mind. "He was out hunting--horrible
pain--two hours. Is this the same? If it is--I shall die--here--alone."

He tried to move after a little, but found himself helpless. A brief
intermission, and the pain rushed on him again, like a violent and
ruthless hand, grinding the very centres of life. When he recovered
consciousness, it was with the double sense of blissful relief from
agony and of ebbing strength. What had happened to him? How long had he
been there?

"Could you drink this?" said a voice behind him. He opened his eyes and
saw a young man, with a halo of red-gold hair, and a tremulous, pitying
face, quite strange to him, bending over him.

There was some brandy at his lips. He drank with difficulty. What had