begins to sink down, down, down through the
dark, where I can't follow. I leap after him and always waken with such
a dizzy start. Oh! I know he has been in trouble. Something is wrong!
His thoughts are reaching out to me and I am so gross and stupid I can't
hear what his spirit says. If I could only get away from things, the
clatter of everyday things that dull one's inner hearing, perhaps I
might know! I feel as if he spoke in a foreign language, but the words
he uses I can't make out. All to-day, he has seemed so near! Why does he
not come home to me?"

"Mighty fond daughter," thought I, with a jealous pang. She was fumbling
among the intricate draperies, where women conceal pockets, and
presently brought out something in the palm of her hand.

"I wouldn't have him know how foolish I am," and she laid the thing
gently against her cheek.

Now I had never given Frances Sutherland a gift of any sort whatever;
and my heart was pierced with anguish that cannot be described. I was,
indeed, falling over a precipice and her arms were not holding me back
but dragging me over. Would that I, like the dreamer, could awaken with
a start. In all conscience, I was dizzy enough; and every pressure of
that hateful object to her face bound me faster in a dungeon of utter
hopelessness. My sweet day-dreams and midnight rhapsodies trooped back
to mock at me. I felt that I must bow broken under anguish or else steel
myself and shout back cynical derision to the whole wan troop of
torturing regrets. And all the time, she was caressing that thing in her
hand and looking down at it with a fondness, which I--poor fool--thought
that I alone could inspire. I suppose if I could have crept away
unobserved, I would have gone from her presence hardened and embittered;
but I must play out the hateful part of eavesdropper to the end.

She opened the hand to feast her eyes on the treasure, and I craned
forward, playing the sneak without a pang of shame, but the dusk foiled
me.

Then the low, mellow, vibrant tones, whose very music would have
intoxicated duller fools than I--'tis ever a comfort to know there are
greater fools--broke in melody: "To my own dear love from her ever
loyal and devoted knight," and she held her opened hand high. 'Twas my
birch-bark message which Father Holland had carried north. I suddenly
went insane with a great overcharge of joy, that paralyzed all motion.

"Dear love--wherever are you?" asked a voice that throbbed w