e continued, with pathos in his voice, "Bridget is
so dreadfully unresigned, Mistress Lyon. Often have I said to her, 'Be
resigned, Bridget--trust in Providence, Bridget!' But as sure as I point
out Bridget's duty, there is something broken in our house!"

"Pity but it was your head, Boyd Connoway! Come away, child!" cried my
grandmother, "quick--lest I do that man an injury. He puts me in such a
state that I declare to goodness I am thankful I have not a poker in my
hand! Now there's your grandfather----"

But she went no further in the discussion of her own lesser household
burden. For there right in front of us was the great gate, the battered
notice to trespassers, the broken standard on which the padlock, now
removed, had worn a rusty hollow, and in its place we read the little
white notice concerning the hours at which the mistress of the mansion
could receive visitors.

"Oh, the poor young things!" said my grandmother, her anger (as was its
wont) instantly cooling, and even Boyd Connoway dropping back into his
own place as perhaps a necessary factor in an ill-regulated but on the
whole rather bearable world.

The gate creaked open slowly. My grandmother drew herself up. For did she
not come of the best blood of the Westland Whigs, great-granddaughter
of that Bell of Whiteside, kinsman of Kenmure's, who was shot by Lag
on the moor of Kirkconnel, near to the Lynn through which the Tarff
foams white?

For me, I was chiefly conscious of the bushes and shrubs on either side
the avenue, broken and trampled in the tumultuous rush of the populace
on the day of the discovery. I felt guilty. By that way Gerty
Greensleeves and I had passed, Gerty very close to my elbow. And now,
like the rolling away of a panorama picture in a show, Gerty
Greensleeves, and all other maids save one, had passed out of my life.
Or so, in my ignorance, I thought at the time.

For no woman ever passes wholly out of any man's life--that is, if he
lives long enough. She steals back again with the coming of life's
gloaming, with the shadows of night creeping across the hills, or the
morning mists swimming up out of the valley. Sometimes she is weeping,
but more often smiling. For there is time enough, since the man last
thought of her, for all tears to be wiped from her eyes. But come she
will. Yet sometimes it is not so. She does not smile. She only stands on
the threshold of a man's soul with reproachful eyes, and lips drawn and
mute. Then