dead could possibly be claimed as our dead, even if
but a handful of unhonored bones.

No, it was not possible. Nobody could expect it after such a lapse of
time. Something David pulled out--it might be paper, it might be rags.
It was too dry to be moss or earth, but no one could have recognized it
as a letter.

"Give it me," said Miss Williams, holding out her hand.

David put the little heap of "rubbish" therein. She regarded it a
moment, and then scattered it on the gravel--"dust to dust," as we say in
our funeral service. But she said nothing.

At the moment the young people they were waiting for came, to the other
side of the gate, clubs in hand. David and the two Miss Moseleys had by
this time become perfectly mad for golf, as is the fashion of the place.
The proceeded across the Links, Miss Williams accompanying them, as in
duty bound. But she said she was "rather tired," and leaving them in
charge of another chaperon--if chaperons are ever wanted or needed in
those merry Links of St. Andrews--came home alone.

Chapter 5

"Shall sharpest pathos blight us, doing no wrong?"

So writes our greatest living poet, in one of the noblest poems he ever
penned. And he speaks truth. The real canker of human existence is not
misery, but sin.

After the first cruel pang, the bitter wail; after her lost life--and we
have here but one life to lose!--her lost happiness, for she knew now
that though she might be very peaceful, very content, no real happiness
ever had come, ever could come to her in this world, except Robert Roy's
love--after this, Fortune sat down, folded her hands, and bowed her head
to the waves of sorrow that kept sweeping over her, not for one day or
two days, but for many days and weeks--the anguish, not of patience, but
regret--sharp, stinging, helpless regret. They came rolling in, those
remorseless billows, just like the long breakers on the sands of St.
Andrews. Hopeless to resist, she could only crouch down and let them
pass. "All Thy waves have gone over me."

Of course this is spoken metaphorically. Outwardly, Miss Williams
neither sat still nor folded her hands. She was seen every where as
usual, her own proper self, as the world knew it; but underneath all that
was the self that she knew, and God knew. No one else. No one ever
could have known, except Robert Roy, had things been different from what
they were--from what God had apparently willed them to be.

A sense