mistake. You see her spark went away when I was a youngster, and she's
got it into her head that he may come back some day, and that he won't
know where to go unless the cottage is there. Why, if the fellow were
alive he would be as old as you, but I've no doubt he's dead long ago.
She's well quit of him, for he must have been a scamp to abandon her as
he did."

"Oh, he abandoned her, did he?"

"Yes--went off to the States, and never so much as sent a word to
bid her good-bye. It was a cruel shame, it was, for the girl has been
a-waiting and a-pining for him ever since. It's my belief that it's
fifty years' weeping that blinded her."

"She is blind!" cried John, half rising to his feet.

"Worse than that," said the fisherman. "She's mortal ill, and not
expected to live. Why, look ye, there's the doctor's carriage a-waiting
at her door."

At this evil tidings old John sprang up and hurried over to the cottage,
where he met the physician returning to his brougham.

"How is your patient, doctor?" he asked in a trembling voice.

"Very bad, very bad," said the man of medicine pompously. "If she
continues to sink she will be in great danger; but if, on the other
hand, she takes a turn, it is possible that she may recover," with which
oracular answer he drove away in a cloud of dust.

John Huxford was still hesitating at the doorway, not knowing how to
announce himself, or how far a shock might be dangerous to the sufferer,
when a gentleman in black came bustling up.

"Can you tell me, my man, if this is where the sick woman is?" he asked.

John nodded, and the clergyman passed in, leaving the door half open.
The wanderer waited until he had gone into the inner room, and then
slipped into the front parlour, where he had spent so many happy hours.
All was the same as ever, down to the smallest ornaments, for Mary had
been in the habit whenever anything was broken of replacing it with
a duplicate, so that there might be no change in the room. He stood
irresolute, looking about him, until he heard a woman's voice from the
inner chamber, and stealing to the door he peeped in.

The invalid was reclining upon a couch, propped up with pillows, and her
face was turned full towards John as he looked round the door. He could
have cried out as his eyes rested upon it, for there were Mary's pale,
plain, sweet homely features as smooth and as unchanged as though she
were still the half child, half woman, whom he had pressed to