orning, and a thick fog was lying over the Channel.

Almost before the train stopped I saw Father Dan, with his coat collar
turned up, waiting for me on the platform. I could see that he was
greatly moved at the sight of me, but was trying hard to maintain his
composure.

"Now don't worry, my child, don't worry," he said. "It will be all
ri. . . . But how well you are looking! And how you have grown! And
how glad your poor mother will be to see you!"

I tried to ask how she was. "Is she . . ."

"Yes, thank God, she's alive, and while there's life there's hope."

We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at Blackwater
at seven the same evening. There we took train, for railways were
running in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that used to be green
with grass, and through the little crofts that used to be red with
fuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned earth.

At the station of our village my father's carriage was waiting for us
and a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to some whispered
question of Father Dan's, and from that I gathered that my mother's
condition was unchanged.

We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of new
electric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the way for the
carriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to build and caw.

I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first seen,
and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my mother at
her window. Father Dan looked, too, but for another reason--to see if
the blinds were down.

Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown more
and more excited as we approached the end of our journey, asked how my
mother was now, poor thing, she answered:

"Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this trouble
and expense has been wasted."

As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and quiet
step and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my way to my
mother's bedroom.

I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the door. I
remember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller than I thought.
I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the rosary hanging on a
brass nail at the pillow end. I remember my little cot which still stood
in the same place and contained some of the clothes I had worn as a
child, and even some of the toys I had played with.

A strange