that
the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before.
Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all. He had flatly
declined. Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as
Japheth was about to leave that side of the county, so that the words
which had divided them were not likely to be explained away or softened
down.

A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a simple
matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined the boy who
had already grown to look on Darton's house as home.

For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness and
satisfaction. There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as neatly
mended as was humanly possible. But after a season the stream of events
followed less clearly, and there were shades in his reveries. Helena was
a fragile woman, of little staying power, physically or morally, and
since the time that he had originally known her--eight or ten years
before--she had been severely tried. She had loved herself out, in
short, and was now occasionally given to moping. Sometimes she spoke
regretfully of the gentilities of her early life, and instead of
comparing her present state with her condition as the wife of the unlucky
Hall, she mused rather on what it had been before she took the first
fatal step of clandestinely marrying him. She did not care to please
such people as those with whom she was thrown as a thriving farmer's
wife. She allowed the pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to
glide by her as sorry details, and had it not been for the children
Darton's house would have seemed but little brighter than it had been
before.

This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes declared to
himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early deviations of the
heart by harking back to the old point mostly failed of success. 'Perhaps
Johns was right,' he would say. 'I should have gone on with Sally.
Better go with the tide and make the best of its course than stem it at
the risk of a capsize.' But he kept these unmelodious thoughts to
himself, and was outwardly considerate and kind.

This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a year
and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of the woman
they concerned. When she was in her grave he thought better of her than
when she had been alive; the farm was a worse place without her than with
her, after