ars, but I do not think that I ever quite understood what
loneliness really meant before. You see," she added by way of an
afterthought, "I thought that you were dead, and there is not much
company in a corpse."

"Well," he said, "one thing is, it would have been lonelier if we had
gone."

"Do you think so?" she answered, looking at him inquiringly. "I don't
quite see how you make that out. If you believe in what we have been
taught, as I think you do, wherever it was you found yourself there
would be plenty of company, and if, like me, you do not believe in
anything, why, then, you would have slept, and sleep asks for nothing."

"Did you believe in nothing when you lay upon the rock waiting to be
drowned, Miss Granger?"

"Nothing!" she answered; "only weak people find revelation in the
extremities of fear. If revelation comes at all, surely it must be born
in the heart and not in the senses. I believed in nothing, and I dreaded
nothing, except the agony of death. Why should I be afraid? Supposing
that I am mistaken, and there is something beyond, is it my fault that
I cannot believe? What have I done that I should be afraid? I have never
harmed anybody that I know of, and if I could believe I would. I wish
I had died," she went on, passionately; "it would be all over now. I am
tired of the world, tired of work and helplessness, and all the little
worries which wear one out. I am not wanted here, I have nothing to live
for, and I wish that I had died!"

"Some day you will think differently, Miss Granger. There are many
things that a woman like yourself can live for--at the least, there is
your work."

She laughed drearily. "My work! If you only knew what it is like you
would not talk to me about it. Every day I roll my stone up the hill,
and every night it seems to roll down again. But you have never taught
in a village school. How can you know? I work all day, and in the
evening perhaps I have to mend the tablecloths, or--what do you
think?--write my father's sermons. It sounds curious, does it not, that
I should write sermons? But I do. I wrote the one he is going to preach
next Sunday. It makes very little difference to him what it is so long
as he can read it, and, of course, I never say anything which can offend
anybody, and I do not think that they listen much. Very few people go to
church in Bryngelly."

"Don't you ever get any time to yourself, then?"

"Oh, yes, sometimes I do, and then I go out in my