her tender heart in a
passion of love and prayer.

"Christ, there are so many little boys in your heaven--leave us Jack!
God, have pity on Esmeralda! She's his mother. ... _Her beloved son
... Must he go_?"

The silent house felt like a prison. Pixie opened a side door and crept
out into the garden. The sun was shining cloudlessly, the scent of
flowers hung on the air, the birds sang blithely overhead; to a
sorrowful heart there seemed something almost brutal in this
indifference of Nature. How could the sun shine when a little innocent
human soul lay suffering cruel torture in that upper room?

Pixie made her way to her favourite seat at the end of a long, straight
path, bordered on each side by square-cut hedges of yew. On the north
side the great bush had grown to a height of eight or ten feet, with a
width almost as great; on the southern side the hedge was kept trimmed
to a level of four feet, to allow a view of the sloping park. For two
hundred yards the path lay straight as a die between those grand old
hedges; occasionally a peacock strutted proudly along its length,
trailing its tail over the gravel, and then the final touch of
picturesqueness was given to the scene, but even the approach of an
ordinary humdrum human had an effect of dignity, of importance, in such
old-world surroundings. It gratified Pixie's keen sense of what it
dramatically termed "a situation" to place herself in this point of
vantage and act the part of audience; and to-day, though no one more
interesting than a gardener was likely to appear, she yet made
instinctively for the accustomed place. The sombre green of the yew was
more in accord with her mood than the riot of blossom in the gardens
beyond, and she was out of sight of those terrible upper windows. At
any moment, as it seemed, a hand from within might stretch out to lower
those blinds ... Could one live through the moment that saw them fall?

Pixie leaned back in her seat, and lived dreamily over the happenings of
the last three days. The morning after the accident the three visitors
had made haste to pack, and depart in different directions--Honor and
Robert Carr to town, Stanor Vaughan to friends at the other side of the
county. Honor had relied on Robert's escort, but he had hurried off by
the nine o'clock train, excusing himself on the score of urgent
business, which fact added largely to the girl's depression.

It was four, o'clock. All day long Pixie ha