t subdued currents of
sense wound amid his later reflections. Crushed for a moment under the
heavy load of life and its lessons, he presented a picture familiar
enough, desirable enough, necessary enough to all humanity, yet pathetic
as exemplified in the young and unintelligent and hopeful. It was the
picture of the dawn of patience--a patience sprung from no religious
inspiration, but representing Will's tacit acknowledgment of defeat in
his earlier battles with the world. The emotion did not banish his
present rebellion against Fate and evil fortune undeserved; but it
caused him to look upon life from a man's standpoint rather than a
child's, and did him a priceless service by shaking to their foundations
his self-confidence and self-esteem. Selfish at least he was not from a
masculine standard, and now his thoughts returned to Phoebe in her
misery, and he rose and retraced his steps with a purpose to comfort her
if he could.

The day began to draw in. Unshed rains massed on the high tors, but
towards the west one great band of primrose sky rolled out above the
vanished sun and lighted a million little amber lamps in the hanging
crystals of the rain. They twinkled on thorns and briars, on the grass,
the silver crosiers of uncurling ferns, and all the rusty-red young
heather.

Then it was that rising from his meditations and turning homeward, the
man distinctly heard himself called from some distance. A voice repeated
his name twice--in clear tones that might have belonged to a boy or a
woman.

"Will! Will!"

Turning sharply upon a challenge thus ringing through absolute
loneliness and silence, Blanchard endeavoured, without success, to
ascertain from whence the summons came. He thought of his mother, then
of his wife, yet neither was visible, and nobody appeared. Only the old
time village spread about him with its hoary granite peering from under
caps of heather and furze, ivy and upspringing thorn. And each stock and
stone seemed listening with him for the repetition of a voice. The sheep
had moved elsewhere, and he stood companionless in that theatre of
vanished life. Trackways and circles wound grey around him, and the
spring vegetation above which they rose all swam into one dim shade, yet
moved with shadows under oncoming darkness. Attributing the voice to his
own unsettled spirit, Blanchard proceeded upon his road to where the
skeleton of a dead horse stared through the gloaming beside a quaking
bog. Its