ith, and led her out under the trees and
into the wood. As they went, Faith looked back.

"Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Davy," she said softly.

Three lights burned in Hamley: one in the Red Mansion, one in the
Cloistered House, and one in Soolsby's hut upon the hill. In the Red
Mansion old Luke Claridge, his face pale with feeling, his white
hair tumbling about, his head thrust forward, his eyes shining, sat
listening, as Faith read aloud letters which Benn Claridge had written
from the East many years before. One letter, written from Bagdad, he
made her read twice. The faded sheet had in it the glow and glamour of
the East; it was like a heart beating with life; emotion rose and fell
in it like the waves of the sea. Once the old man interrupted Faith.

"Davy--it is as though Davy spoke. It is like Davy--both Claridge, both
Claridge," he said. "But is it not like Davy? Davy is doing what it was
in Benn's heart to do. Benn showed the way; Benn called, and Davy came."

He laid both hands upon his knees and raised his eyes. "O Lord, I have
sought to do according to Thy will," he whispered. He was thinking of a
thing he had long hidden. Through many years he had no doubt, no qualm;
but, since David had gone to Egypt, some spirit of unquiet had worked
in him. He had acted against the prayer of his own wife, lying in her
grave--a quiet-faced woman, who had never crossed him, who had never
shown a note of passion in all her life, save in one thing concerning
David. Upon it, like some prophetess, she had flamed out. With the
insight which only women have where children are concerned, she had told
him that he would live to repent of what he had done. She had died soon
after, and was laid beside the deserted young mother, whose days had
budded and blossomed, and fallen like petals to the ground, while yet it
was the spring.

Luke Claridge had understood neither, not his wife when she had said:
"Thee should let the Lord do His own work, Luke," nor his dying daughter
Mercy, whose last words had been: "With love and sorrow I have sowed;
he shall reap rejoicing--my babe. Thee will set him in the garden in the
sun, where God may find him--God will not pass him by. He will take him
by the hand and lead him home." The old man had thought her touched by
delirium then, though her words were but the parable of a mind fed by
the poetry of life, by a shy spirit, to which meditation gave fancy and
farseeing. David had come by his idealism