ty of such a
phenomenon as this being more than a dream-fancy roused him with a start
from his heaviness.

'I must have been asleep,' he said.

Yet she had seemed so real. Pierston however dismissed the strange
impression, arguing that even if the information sent him of Avice's
death should be false--a thing incredible--that sweet friend of his
youth, despite the transfiguring effects of moonlight, would not now
look the same as she had appeared nineteen or twenty years ago. Were
what he saw substantial flesh, it must have been some other person than
Avice Caro.

Having satisfied his sentiment by coming to the graveside there was
nothing more for him to do in the island, and he decided to return to
London that night. But some time remaining still on his hands,
Jocelyn by a natural instinct turned his feet in the direction of
East Quarriers, the village of his birth and of hers. Passing the
market-square he pursued the arm of road to 'Sylvania Castle,' a private
mansion of comparatively modern date, in whose grounds stood the single
plantation of trees of which the isle could boast. The cottages extended
close to the walls of the enclosure, and one of the last of these
dwellings had been Avice's, in which, as it was her freehold, she
possibly had died.

To reach it he passed the gates of 'Sylvania,' and observed above the
lawn wall a board announcing that the house was to be let furnished. A
few steps further revealed the cottage which with its quaint and massive
stone features of two or three centuries' antiquity, was capable
even now of longer resistance to the rasp of Time than ordinary new
erections. His attention was drawn to the window, still unblinded,
though a lamp lit the room. He stepped back against the wall opposite,
and gazed in.

At a table covered with a white cloth a young woman stood putting
tea-things away into a corner-cupboard. She was in all respects the
Avice he had lost, the girl he had seen in the churchyard and had
fancied to be the illusion of a dream. And though there was this time
no doubt about her reality, the isolation of her position in the silent
house lent her a curiously startling aspect. Divining the explanation he
waited for footsteps, and in a few moments a quarryman passed him on his
journey home. Pierston inquired of the man concerning the spectacle.

'O yes, sir; that's poor Mrs. Caro's only daughter, and it must be
lonely for her there to-night, poor maid! Yes, good-now;