her hand patted it in his gentle, fatherly
way.

"You will be glad to hear, my love," he said, "that I can speak from
personal experience of Anne Rodway's happiness. She came to live in my
parish soon after the trial at which she appeared as chief witness,
and I was the clergyman who married her. Months before that I knew her
story, and had read those portions of her diary which you have just
heard. When I made her my little present on her wedding day, and when
she gratefully entreated me to tell her what she could do for me in
return, I asked for a copy of her diary to keep among the papers that
I treasured most. 'The reading of it now and then,' I said, 'will
encourage that faith in the brighter and better part of human nature
which I hope, by God's help, to preserve pure to my dying day.' In that
way I became possessed of the manuscript: it was Anne's husband who made
the copy for me. You have noticed a few withered leaves scattered here
and there between the pages. They were put there, years since, by the
bride's own hand: they are all that now remain of the flowers that Anne
Rodway gathered on her marriage morning from Mary Mallinson's grave."

Jessie tried to answer, but the words failed on her lips. Between the
effect of the story, and the anticipation of the parting now so near at
hand, the good, impulsive, affectionate creature was fairly overcome.
She laid her head on Owen's shoulder, and kept tight hold of his hand,
and let her heart speak simply for itself, without attempting to help it
by a single word.

The silence that followed was broken harshly by the tower clock. The
heavy hammer slowly rang out ten strokes through the gloomy night-time
and the dying storm.

I waited till the last humming echo of the clock fainted into dead
stillness. I listened once more attentively, and again listened in vain.
Then I rose, and proposed to my brothers that we should leave our guest
to compose herself for the night.

When Owen and Morgan were ready to quit the room, I took her by the
hand, and drew her a little aside.

"You leave us early, my dear," I said; "but, before you go to-morrow
morning--"

I stopped to listen for the last time, before the words were spoken
which committed me to the desperate experiment of pleading George's
cause in defiance of his own request. Nothing caught my ear but the
sweep of the weary weakened wind and the melancholy surging of the
shaken trees.

"But, before you go to-morro