seemed hours to
Phebe. The stranger--for who could be so great a stranger as one who
had been many years dead?--had advanced only a step or two from the
threshold, and paused as if some invisible barrier was set up between
them. She had shrunk back, and stood leaning against the wall for the
support her trembling limbs needed. It was with a vehement effort that
at last she spoke.

"Roland Sefton!" she faltered.

"Yes!" he answered, "I am that most miserable man."

"But you died," she said with quivering lips, "fourteen years ago."

"No, Phebe, no," he replied; "would to God I had died then."

Once more an agony of mingled fear and joy overwhelmed her. This dear
voice, so lamentable and hopeless, so well remembered in all its tones,
told her that he was still living, whom she had mourned over so many
years. But what could this mystery mean? What had he passed through?
What was about to happen now? A tumult of thoughts thronged to her
brain. But clearest of all came the assurance that he was alive,
standing there, desolate, changed, and friendless. She ran to him and
clasped his hands in hers; stooping down and kissing them, those hard
worn hands, which he left unresistingly in her grasp. These loving, and
deferential caresses belonged to the time when she was a humble country
girl, and he the friend very far above her.

"Come closer to the fire, your hands are cold, Mr. Roland," she said,
speaking in the old long-disused accent of her early days, as she might
have spoken to him while she was yet a child. She threw a few logs on
the fire, and drew up Canon Pascal's chair to the hearth for him. She
felt spell-bound; and as if she had been suddenly thrust back upon those
old times.

"I am no longer Roland Sefton," he said, sinking down into the chair;
"he died, as you say, many a long year ago. Do not light the lamp,
Phebe; let us talk by the firelight."

The flicker of the flames creeping round the dry wood played upon his
face, and her eyes were fastened on it. Could this man really be Roland
Sefton, or was she being tricked by her fancy? Here was a scarred and
wrinkled face, blistered and burnt by the summer's sun, and cut and
frost-bitten by the winter's cold; the hair was gray and ragged, and the
eyes far sunk in the head met her gaze with a despairing and uneasy
glance, as if he shrank from her close scrutiny. His bowed shoulders and
hands roughened by toil, and worn-out mechanic's dress, were such a
change,