n sprinkled over it, and there
were deep lines in the face I remembered as being very merry. I had a
passing wonder that in this moment he remembered my existence or
recognized me, for Lord and Lady St. Leger were still dumb or
inarticulate with joy, and could not have spoken of me.

"Yes, I am Bawn," I said, lifting my face to kiss him. "I am so glad you
have come home, Uncle Luke."

"I should have come long ago," he said. "Yet, thank God, I come in time.
I have messages for you, little Bawn, to be delivered later."

So he, he of all people, was Anthony's messenger!

He put his arm about me and we returned to the old couple by the fire.

"We were kept back by the storm," he said. "Oh, how I fretted and fumed
lest I should arrive too late! And Mary Champion, how is she? Is she
maid or wife or widow?"

"She never married, for your sake, Uncle Luke," I said, speaking up
boldly. "You will see her to-morrow morning."

Then I saw that he still wore his heavy cloak, and I made him take it
off; and he put his mother in one chair and his father in another and
sat down between them, and I came and sat on the rug at their feet.

"We thought you were dead," his father said, looking at him with an air
of beatitude.

"_I_ never did," said the mother. "And Maureen did not. Nor did Mary
Champion. Luke, Luke, why did you stay away so long?"

"Because I thought I was best dead, little mother. Because I thought I
should have to stand my trial for murder if I came back. I have lived in
the waste places of the world since I left you, or I must have known. I
say waste places, yet they are beautiful, fruitful places of the earth;
only there are few white men there and those adventurers. For beauty and
kindliness it was the Garden of Eden; but there has never been a day
when I was not sick for Aghadoe."

"And how did you know at last?" his father asked. His mother could only
look at him with shining eyes.

"Why, some one came from these parts to enlighten my blindness. He was
hunting for treasure. I knew where the treasure lay, twenty fathoms
deep, in a little bay of an island in the South Seas. What use was
treasure to me since I could not come home? I have known murder and
worse done over treasure. I knew it was there, and I let it be. The
gentle, brown people of the islands had no use for it. It would only
have brought in lawless and desperate men to disturb the peace of that
Garden of Eden. Now it makes me a rich man. It mak