up the pile of stained altar-linen from
the ground, and going once more into the sacristy she thrust it into the
oak chest in which were kept the Lenten furnishings of the altar. Having
done that, and walking slowly lest she should trip and fall, she made
her way to the narrow door Charles had left open to the air, and going
down the steep stairway was soon out of doors in the dark and windy
night.

Charles had been right, the moon gave but little light; enough, however,
so she told herself, for the accomplishment of her task.

She sped swiftly along the terrace, keeping close under the house, and
then more slowly walked down the stone steps where last time she trod
them Mottram had been her companion, his living lips as silent as were
his dead lips now.

The orchard gate was wide open, and as she passed through there came to
Catherine Nagle the knowledge why Charles on his way back from the wood
had not even latched it; he also, when passing through it, had been
bearing a burden....

She walked down the field path; and when she came to the steep place
where Mottram had told her that he was going away, the tears for the
first time began running down Catherine's face. She felt again the
sharp, poignant pain which his then cold and measured words had dealt
her, and the blow this time fell on a bruised heart. With a convulsive
gesture she pressed more closely that which she was holding to her
desolate breast.

At night the woodland is strangely, curiously alive. Catherine shuddered
as she heard the stuffless sounds, the tiny rustlings and burrowings of
those wild, shy creatures whose solitude had lately been so rudely
invaded, and who now of man's night made their day. Their myriad
presence made her human loneliness more intense than it had been in the
open fields, and as she started walking by the side of the iron rails,
her eyes fixed on the dark drift of dead leaves which dimly marked the
path, she felt solitary indeed, and beset with vague and fearsome
terrors.

At last she found herself nearing the end of the wood. Soon would come
the place where what remained of the cart-track struck sharply to the
left, up the hill towards the Eype.

It was there, close to the open, that Catherine Nagle's quest ended; and
that she was able to accomplish the task she had set herself, of making
that which Charles had rendered incomplete, complete as men, considering
the flesh, count completeness.

Within but a few yards of