t none of us shall enter paradise except God cover us with His
mercy.

And not one word of all her trouble did Denas titter. She spoke only
of Roland's great love for her; of their trials endured together; of
his resignation to death; of her own loneliness and suffering since
his burial; and then, clasping her father's and mother's hands, she
said:

"So I have come back to you. I have come back to my old life. I shall
never act again. I shall sing no more in this world. That life is
over. It was not a happy life. Without Roland it would be beyond my
power to endure it."

"You be welcome here as the sunshine. Oh, my dear girl, you be light
to my eyes and joy to my heart, and there is no trouble can hurt me
much now."

Then Joan said: "'Twas this very morning I put clean linen on your
bed, Denas. I swept the room, and then made the pie, and clotted the
cream, and I never knew who I did it for. Oh, Denas, what a godsend
you do be! John, my old dear, our life be turned to sunshine now."

And long after Denas had fallen asleep they sat by their fire and
talked of their child's sorrow, and Joan got up frequently and took a
candle and, shading it with her hand, went and looked to see if the
girl was all right. When Denas was a babe in the cradle, Joan had been
used to satisfy her motherly longing in the same way. Her widowed
child was still her baby.

In the morning John went from cottage to cottage and told his friends
to come and rejoice with him. For really to John "the dead was alive
and the lost was found." And it was a great wonderment in the village;
men nor women could talk of anything else but the return of Denas
Tresham. Many were really glad to see her; and if some visited the
poor, stricken woman thinking to add a homily to God's smiting, they
were abashed by her evident suffering, by her pallor and her wasted
form, and the sombre plainness of her black garments. For some days
life was thus kept at a tension beyond its natural strain, and Joan
and her daughter had no time to recover the every-day atmosphere. But
no excitement outlasts the week's perchances and changes, and after
the second Sunday all her acquaintances had seen Denas, and curiosity
and interest were at their normal standard.

All her acquaintances but Tris Penrose. Denas wondered that he did not
come to see her, and yet she had a shy dislike to make inquiries about
him. For the love of Tris Penrose for Denas Penelles had been the
village r