The sodden dreary paths beside the river, familiar as they were to
Rallywood, now looked strange to him. He seemed to be revisiting them
after a long absence. Had they worn the same menace in the past? How had
he endured to ride for those six heavy years under the hills and up and
down through the marshes by the black river, one day like the last,
without a purpose or an interest beyond the action of the hour? He
lifted his head to the gathering storm, thanking Heaven that phase of
life, or rather that long stagnation, could never come again!

The horrible emptiness of the place appalled him. Only a few
block-houses dotted the miles of waste. In summer, when the pools
yellowed over with flowering plants, rare wood-pigeons eked out a scanty
subsistence in the thickets, and there was little else the seasons
round. Only the patrols, and the trains and the smugglers, with a boar
or two in the forests beside the Kofn, and the ragged wolf-packs that go
howling by the guard-houses at the first powdering of snow. From the
past his mind naturally ran on to thoughts of Valerie--thoughts that
were hopeless and happy at the same time. He could never win her, yet
those few dim moments in the corridor were his own, and whatever the
future brought to her, would she ever quite forget them?

Presently as he rode along he came in sight of the block-house by the
Ford from which he had gone out to Revonde to meet her--gone
unknowingly! It lay in the dip about a mile ahead. If he were to return
to-morrow to the narrow quarters he had occupied for so many months, the
very memory of her would glorify the wooden walls, and even the old
barren monotony of life with the frontier patrol be chequered and
cheered by the knowledge that somewhere under the same skies Valerie
Selpdorf lived and smiled.

The beggars of love--such as Rallywood--are apt to believe that in the
mere fact of owning remembrance, they own wealth which can never be
expended. But the day comes soon when we know ourselves poor
indeed--when we find the comfort of memory wearing thin, when the soul
aches for a presence beyond reach of the hands, for a voice grown too
dear to forget, that must for ever escape our ears. Eheu! the bitter
lesson of vain desire.

Between Rallywood and the Ford the Kofn widened out into a big bay-like
reach, upon the further shore of which the trees gathered thickly, their
bare branches overhanging the water. On the nearer side ragged-headed
pines