He was evidently puzzled to understand me when I
informed him that the only object of my visit was to look once more
at the familiar scenes round my old home. But he willingly placed his
services at my disposal; and he engaged to do his best, if I wished it,
to make me up a bed for the night.

The house had been closed and the establishment of servants had been
dismissed for more than a year past. A passion for horse-racing,
developed late in life, had ruined the rich retired tradesman who had
purchased the estate at the time of our family troubles. He had gone
abroad with his wife to live on the little income that had been saved
from the wreck of his fortune; and he had left the house and lands in
such a state of neglect that no new purchaser had thus far been found to
take them. My old friend, "now past his work," had been put in charge of
the place. As for Dermody's cottage, it was empty, like the house. I was
at perfect liberty to look over it if I liked. There was the key of the
door on the bunch with the others; and here was the old man, with his
old hat on his head, ready to accompany me wherever I pleased to go.
I declined to trouble him to accompany me or to make up a bed in the
lonely house. The night was fine, the moon was rising. I had supped; I
had rested. When I had seen what I wanted to see, I could easily walk
back to the market-town and sleep at the inn. Taking the key in my hand,
I set forth alone on the way through the grounds which led to Dermody's
cottage.

Again I followed the woodland paths along which I had once idled so
happily with my little Mary. At every step I saw something that reminded
me of her. Here was the rustic bench on which we had sat together under
the shadow of the old cedar-tree, and vowed to be constant to each other
to the end of our lives. There was the bright little water spring, from
which we drank when we were weary and thirsty in sultry summer days,
still bubbling its way downward to the lake as cheerily as ever. As I
listened to the companionable murmur of the stream, I almost expected to
see her again, in her simple white frock and straw hat, singing to the
music of the rivulet, and freshening her nosegay of wild flowers by
dipping it in the cool water. A few steps further on and I reached a
clearing in the wood and stood on a little promontory of rising ground
which commanded the prettiest view of Greenwater lake. A platform
of wood was built out from the bank, to be