s and even beauty; it was
always spotless and tidy, and full of bits of bright color--gay
patchwork and crockery, and a snow-white hearth with its glow of
fiery peat. Always she was ready to welcome him home with a loving
kiss and all the material comforts his toil required. _And they
loved each other!_ When that has been said, what remains unsaid? It
covers the whole ground of earthly happiness.

How the first shadow crossed the threshold of this happy home
neither Liot nor Karen could tell; it came without observation.
It was in the air, and entered as subtly and as silently. Liot
noticed it first. It began with the return of Brent. When he gave
Bele the piece of cloth and the gold brooch for his wife, he was
on the point of leaving Amsterdam for Java. Fever and various other
things delayed his return, but in the end he came back to Lerwick
and began to talk about Bele. For Auda, reticent until her husband's
return, then told him of Bele's visit; and one speculation grew on
the top of another until something like the truth was in all men's
minds, even though it was not spoken. Liot saw the thought forming in
eyes that looked at him; he felt it in little reluctances of his
mates, and heard it, or thought he heard it, in their voices. He
took home with him the unhappy hesitation or misgiving, and watched
to see if it would touch the consciousness of Karen. The loving
wife, just approaching the perilous happiness of maternity, kept
asking herself, "What is it? What is it?" And the answer was ever
the same--the accusing words that Matilda Sabiston had said, and
the quick, sick terror of heart they had awakened.

On Christmas day Karen had a son, a child of extraordinary beauty,
that brought his soul into the world with him. The women said that
his eyes instantly followed the light, and that his birth-cry passed
into a smile. Liot was solemnly and silently happy. He sat for hours
holding his wife's hand and watching the little lad sleeping so
sweetly after his first hard travail; for the birth of this child
meant to Liot far more than any mortal comprehended. He knew himself
to be of religiously royal ancestry, and the covenant of God to
such ran distinctly, "_To you and your children._" So, then, if God
had refused him children, he would certainly have believed that for
his sin in regard to Bele Trenby the covenant between God and the
Borsons was broken. This fair babe was a renewal of it. He took
him in his arms with