long dream and
strangeness to him, nothing real anywhere but consciousness, and God its
source; the soul attacked every now and then by phantom stabs of doubt,
of bitter, brief misgiving, as the barriers of sense between it and the
eternal enigma grew more and more transparent, wrestling a while, and
then prevailing. And each golden moment of certainty, of conquering
faith, seemed to Robert in some sort a gift from Catherine's hand. It
was she who led him through the shades; it was her voice murmuring in
his ear.

When the first gray dawn began to creep in slowly perceptible waves into
the room, Elsmere felt as though not hours but fears of experience lay
between him and the beginnings of his watch.

'It is by these moments we should date our lives' he murmured to himself
as he rose: 'they are the only real landmarks.'

It was eight o'clock, and the nurse who was to relieve him had come.
The results of the night for his charge were good: the strength had
been maintained, the pulse was firmer, the temperature lower. The boy,
throwing off his drowsiness, lay watching the Rector's face as he talked
in an undertone to the nurse, his haggard eyes full of a dumb, friendly
wistfulness. When Robert bent over him to say good-by, this expression
brightened into something more positive, and Robert left him, feeling at
last that there was a promise of life in his look and touch.

In, another moment he had stepped out into the January morning. It was
clear and still as the night had been. In the east there was a pale
promise of sun; the reddish-brown trunks of the fir woods had just
caught it and rose faintly in glowing in endless vistas and colonnades
one behind the other. The flooded river itself rushed through the bridge
as full and turbid as before, but all the other water surfaces had
gleaming films of ice. The whole ruinous place had a clean, almost a
festal air under the touch of the frost, while on the side of the hill
leading to Murewell, tree rose above tree, the delicate network of their
wintry twigs and branches set against stretches of frost-whitened grass,
till finally they climbed into the pale all-completing blue. In a copse
close at hand there were woodcutters at work, and piles of gleaming
laths shining through the underwood. Robins hopped along the frosty
road, and as he walked on through the houses toward the bridge, Robert's
quick ear distinguished that most wintry of all sounds--the cry of a
flock of field