overed rustic seat
he noticed a few sprays of withered heather that had been lying there
since last year. Perhaps Fay had gathered them.

He hesitated a moment--should he wait for her here or seek her
further? A trifle decided him. Among the raspberry bushes that tangled
the underwood was a little bunch of wild flowers caught on a bramble.
The floral message seemed to lure him onward, and he followed the
narrow, winding path. By and by he came to a little green nook of a
place as full of moss and sunshine as a nest; there was a great pool
near it, where some silver trout were leaping and flashing in the
light. The whole spot seemed to come before him strangely. Had he seen
it in a dream?

He crept along cautiously. He fancied he had caught a white gleam
between the trees that was neither sunshine nor water. He groped his
way through the underwood, putting the branches back that they might
not crackle, and then all at once he stood still; for he saw a little
runlet of a stream making dimples of eddies round a fallen tree, and a
great silver birch sweeping over it; and there, in her soft spring
dress, with the ripples of golden-brown hair shining under her hat,
was his lost Wee Wifie. She had floated a rowan-branch on the stream
and was watching it idly, and Nero, sitting up on his haunches beside
his little mistress, was watching it too.

Hugh's heart beat faster as he looked at her. He had not admired her
much in the old days, and yet how beautiful she was. Either his taste
had changed or these sad months had altered her; but a fairer and a
sweeter face he owned to himself that he had never seen, and all his
man's heart went out to her in in a deep and pitiful love. Just then
there was a crackling in the bushes and Nero growled, and Fay, looking
up startled, saw her husband standing opposite to her.

In life there are often strange meetings and partings; moments that
seem to hold the condensed joy or pain of years. One grows a little
stony--a little colorless. There are flushes perhaps, a weight and
oppression of unshed tears, and a falter of questions never answered;
but it is not until afterward that full consciousness comes, that one
knows that the concentrated essence of bitterness or pleasure has been
experienced, the memory of which will last to our dying days. It was
so with Fay when she looked up from her mossy log and saw Hugh with
his fair-bearded face standing under the dark larches. She did not
faint or