ed and left him free,
Free! but a stain of shame
Rests on the proud old name.
At a bitter cost she has set him free--
Free! with a blemished fame.

And he with the pride of his race,
With a resolute, calm control,
Locks in his heart the heart's disgrace,
Shows of his shame no subtlest trace,
Hiding the hurt of a stricken soul
'Neath the calm of a passionless face.

He had deemed it a cowardly thing to fly
While the village prated anent his shame,
And an added blot on his noble name
By his own hand to die.

But oft in the deep of night I hear
Borne on the wild night wind,
The beat of the mare's hoofs thundering past,
And my heart is clutched by an icy fear
Of a direful thing that may chance at last;
For ride he never so far, so fast--
Black Care rides hard behind.

XVI.

Last night as I stood in the gloaming's gray,
Ere the moon came into the sky,
He came to me for a last good-bye--
At last he is going away.

His face in the dusk showed stern and set,
Old and haggard and worn with pain;
"Dear, I may never see you again--
Mine but the meed regret!
How can I ask you to share my shame,
How can I give you my blemished name,
Yet how shall the heart forget?

Naught in my life save a dream have I,
A dream--a vision, too fair to be,
A rose that blooms 'mid the rue for me--
Naught but a dream ... Good-bye."

And then, ere he lifted his bridle rein
To ride away down the dark'ning land,
He bent and touched with his lips the hand
I had laid on the chestnut's mane.

XVII.

Something ... my senses will scarce recall ...
The horror they came in the night to tell ...
The mare had galloped riderless home,
Blown and bleeding and flecked with foam,
And they found him there by the sunken wall,
Hurt to the death by the desperate fall.
How it had chanced, he could only tell,
Ere the merciful numbness stole his brain;
How the chestnut rose to the leap and fell....
Then his senses closed on the shocks of pain.
He spoke, they told me, but once again--
To whisper my name with his struggling breath--
(Thank God, he suffered so brief a while)
Then peacefully sank on the breast of Death,
Dead, with his lips asmile.

How can I wish him alive again,
Lying so peacefully, placidly still,
With that carven smile on his marble face.
How can I pray that his heart should thrill
To waking and waking's pain?
Lying so peacefully, placidly still.
With the old, sweet smile on his quiet face,
Dead