ked at him without speaking, and he led the way swiftly through
the silent wood under the moon. The Bishop followed.

The keeper's cottage had a dim yellow glimmer in it. Man's little light
looked like a kind of darkness in the great white, all-pervading
splendor of the night. The cottage door was open. Dr. Brown was looking
out.

Rachel went up to him.

"Where is he?" she said.

He tried to speak; he tried to hold her gently back while he explained
something. But he saw she was past explanation, blind and deaf except
for one voice, one face.

"Where is he?" she repeated, shaking her head impatiently.

"Here," said the doctor, and he led her through the kitchen. A man and
woman rose up from the fireside as she came in. He opened the door into
the little parlor.

On the floor on a mattress lay a tall figure. The head, supported on a
pillow, was turned towards the door, the wide eyes were fixed on the
candle on the table. The lips moved continually. The hands were picking
at the blankets.

For the first moment Rachel did not know him. How could this be Hugh?
How could these blank, unrecognizing eyes be Hugh's eyes, which had
never until now met hers without love?

But it was he. Yes, it was he. She traced the likeness as we do in a
man's son to the man himself.

She fell on her knees beside him and took the wandering hands and kissed
them.

He looked at her, through her, with those bright, unseeing eyes, and the
burning hands escaped from hers back to their weary work.

Dick, whose eyes had followed Rachel, turned away biting his lip, and
sat down in a corner of the kitchen. The keeper and his wife had slipped
away into the little scullery.

The Bishop went up to Dick and put his arm round his shoulders. Two
tears of pain were standing in Dick's hawk-eyes. He had seen Rachel kiss
Hugh's hands. He ground his heel against the brick floor.

The Bishop understood, and understood, too, the sudden revulsion of
feeling.

"Poor chap!" said Dick, huskily. "It's frightful hard luck on him to
have to go just when she was to have married him. If it had been me I
could not have borne it; but then I would have taken care I was not
drowned. I'd have seen to that. But it's frightful hard luck on him, all
the same."

"I suppose he was taking a short cut across the ice."

"Yes," said Dick, "and he got in where any one who knew the look of ice
would have known he would be sure to get in. The keeper watched him
cross