ld me. That wretch, whose
name I can never mention, even has said it: how you tried to avert the
quarrel, and would have taken it on yourself, my poor child: but it was
God's will that I should be punished, and that my dear lord should fall."

"He gave me his blessing on his death-bed," Esmond said. "Thank God for
that legacy!"

"Amen, amen! dear Henry," says the lady, pressing his arm. "I knew it. Mr.
Atterbury, of St. Bride's, who was called to him, told me so. And I
thanked God, too, and in my prayers ever since remembered it."

"You had spared me many a bitter night, had you told me sooner," Mr.
Esmond said.

"I know it, I know it," she answered, in a tone of such sweet humility, as
made Esmond repent that he should ever have dared to reproach her. "I know
how wicked my heart has been; and I have suffered too, my dear. I
confessed to Mr. Atterbury--I must not tell any more. He--I said I would not
write to you or go to you--and it was better even that, having parted, we
should part. But I knew you would come back--I own that. That is no one's
fault. And to-day, Henry, in the anthem, when they sang it, 'When the Lord
turned the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream', I thought,
yes, like them that dream--them that dream. And then it went, 'They that
sow in tears shall reap in joy; and he that goeth forth and weepeth, shall
doubtless come home again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him';
I looked up from the book, and saw you. I was not surprised when I saw
you. I knew you would come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine round your
head."

She smiled an almost wild smile as she looked up at him. The moon was up
by this time, glittering keen in the frosty sky. He could see, for the
first time now clearly, her sweet careworn face.

"Do you know what day it is?" she continued. "It is the 29th of
December--it is your birthday! But last year we did not drink it--no, no. My
lord was cold, and my Harry was likely to die; and my brain was in a
fever; and we had no wine. But now--now you are come again, bringing your
sheaves with you, my dear." She burst into a wild flood of weeping as she
spoke; she laughed and sobbed on the young man's heart, crying out wildly,
"bringing your sheaves with you--your sheaves with you!"

As he had sometimes felt, gazing up from the deck at midnight into the
boundless starlit depths overhead, in a rapture of devout wonder at that
endless brightness and beauty--in some such