showed him that I was noticing and listening to
every movement. I knew every expression ol
his face, and every tone of his voice, so as to
measure accurately every emotion that thrilled
through his heart and soul. Sometimes by a few
words from the pages under my hand, or by a
softly sung verse—he used to love my singing—
of some hymn of judgment and threatened
vengeance, I could make his stern features quiver
like those of a child in dread of punishment.
Let him come as early as he would in the morning,
I was seated at my press before him; and
in the evening he left me still sitting beside the
workroom fire. There was no moment of his
working life, the daily hours of toil in which he
earned his bread, but I was beside him, haunting
him— the embodiment of a horrible suspicion, set
against him as a living sign of an unuttered and
as yet undefined accusation.

But this was not all. From his early youth
George had been a member of a Methodist
congregation, holding a somewhat honourable
position among them; and in his religious life I was
with him, at his side; noticing, listening, catching
up every word he suffered to fall from his
lips. All the profession required of us was that
we were seeking to flee from the wrath to come;
and if ever hopeless wretches needed to escape
from coming wrath, he, George Denning, was
one, and I, Rachel Holland, was another. In
our weekly meetings, where each in turn gave an
account of his inner life during the past week, I
placed myself opposite to him. where my gaze
could be fixed upon him, in that circle where all
else sat with closed or downcast eyes, while he
gave utterance to the few, feeble, common-place,
empty words he dared to speak before me, let
his heart burn within him as it would. It was
the mockery of a soul-refreshing confession, the
dead image of a living fellowship. Twice he
broke out into wild, ungovernable lamentations,
full of an exceeding bitterness and mystery,
which shook him in every nerve, and left him
without strength or speech; while it was in my
power, by a chance solemn word here and there,
some awful threatening, some dread suggestive
verse which hinted at an unknown sin, to turn
his face pale with fear, or blank with conviction,
while his strong frame heaved with groans he
dared not utter.

But the suffering was not all his—scarcely
more his than mine. Alas for the dreary dying
away of all the hope and bloom of womanhood!
Only seven hours of innocent, forgetful sleep,
and all the seventeen remaining burdened with
one maddening thought. I marvelled to myself,
as day after day I drudged at my work, at the
dull, deadly hatred that possessed me against
this man, who had been the object of my most
tender love. Was it he and I who had rambled
through dewy lanes in the quiet dusk or sleeping
moonlight, with low-toned voices, and twined
hands, and half stolen kisses was it he and I, in
truth, who had passed through that trance
together? Or was it not some dreamy Paradise,
some deception of my crazed brain? Then, I
scarcely ventured to lift up my eyes to his if he
were looking at me; now, it was he whose eyelids
fell before my glance, and who turned aside his
head, and shrank away from my nearer approach.
Even when, as years rolled on, I saw the strong
frame showing tokens of early age and incurable
decline from the prolonged anguish of his mind,
I permitted no relenting from my fell purpose.
I was rather jealous lest disease should snatch
from me this wan, wasting man, who still held in
his hidden heart the secret for which I had
sacrificed all my womanliness, and for which
my brother yet pined in miserable banishment.
I also suffered the agonies of despair before
this speechless possessor of a secret that had
robbed me of all the hopes and joys and loves of
life.

But it came to pass that after seven years of
ceaseless watching, when I had grown old and
worn down into a passive and sullen endurance
of my condition, there awoke within me one
Eastertide a restless and vehement desire to
revisit my native town, where I had left no trace
of myself, except a vague rumour that I was
soon going to join my brother in America. I
asked leave of my master to take holiday from
the eve of Good Friday until Easter Monday,
and started forth a grey, nerveless, fearful woman,
from the tomblike stillness of the solitary
house, into the noise and bustle of the world.
Once more, with shaking heart, I trod the
dolorous way along which I had led Willie quailing
beneath the eyes and whispers of our band of
witnesses; and once more I stood before the
threshold crossed by my mother's feet, and where
upon peaceful Sunday evenings I had watched
Willie and George going away, with many backward
glances and gestures of farewell. I had
hoped that I should find it empty and deserted
like the house I came from, and that I might
have wandered alone through the rooms again;
but there was the noise of laughter within,
and the shadows of flitting figures upon the
lighted curtains, and I turned away to seek
the only asylum I would enter in my native
town.

It was one of a row of poor almshouses built
amid the graves of the churchyard, and under
the shadow of the church tower. A short bypath
was trodden down over the little mounds,
and I was guided across it by the glimmering
from the windows of the small dwellings. Again
I tarried on a threshold, listening; for I did not
know that my only and aged friend was still
living, and my heart bounded as the sound of a
:heery voice, shrill with years like the high notes
of an old flute, came like music to my ears.
As soon as the twittering song was ended, I
tapped lightly at the door. There was the brisk
clicking of a stick upon the quarried floor
within, and then the door was opened widely, as
if the aged woman had done for ever with fear
or distrust, and was ready to welcome the whole
world to her poor hearth.