e me her exact address? I want to write to her."

But Em had gone into the next room.

When food was on the table she knelt down before the fire, turning the
cakes, babbling restlessly, eagerly, now of this, now of that. She
was glad to see him--Tant Sannie was coming soon to show her her new
baby--he must stay on the farm now, and help her. And Waldo himself was
well content to eat his meal in silence, asking no more questions.

"Gregory is coming back next week," she said; "he will have been
gone just a hundred and three days tomorrow. I had a letter from him
yesterday."

"Where has he been?"

But his companion stooped to lift a cake from the fire.

"How the wind blows! One can hardly hear one's own voice," she said.
"Take this warm cake; no one's cakes are like mine. Why, you have eaten
nothing!"

"I am a little weary," he said; "the wind was mad tonight."

He folded his arms, and rested his head against the fireplace, whilst
she removed the dishes from the table. On the mantelpiece stood an
inkpot and some sheets of paper. Presently he took them down and turned
up the corner of the tablecloth.

"I will write a few lines," he said; "till you are ready to sit down and
talk."

Em, as she shook out the tablecloth, watched him bending intently over
his paper. He had changed much. His face had grown thinner; his cheeks
were almost hollow, though they were covered by a dark growth of beard.

She sat down on the skin beside him, and felt the little bundle on the
bench; it was painfully small and soft. Perhaps it held a shirt and a
book, but nothing more. The old black hat had a piece of unhemmed muslin
twisted round it, and on his elbow was a large patch so fixed on with
yellow thread that her heart ached. Only his hair was not changed, and
hung in silky beautiful waves almost to his shoulders.

Tomorrow she would take the ragged edge off his collar, and put a new
band round his hat. She did not interrupt him, but she wondered how it
was that he sat to write so intently after his long weary walk. He was
not tired now; his pen hurried quickly and restlessly over the paper,
and his eye was bright. Presently Em raised her hand to her breast,
where lay the letter yesterday had brought her. Soon she had forgotten
him, as entirely as he had forgotten her; each was in his own world with
his own. He was writing to Lyndall. He would tell her all he had seen,
all he had done, though it were nothing worth relating. He se