my road. I was going to
ask for lodgings at a place called Willet's Farm. I suppose I took the
wrong turning; and when I saw this house before me, I knew it must be
yours from what I had heard of it. It seemed as if Fate had brought me
here. And when I came up the path I saw Sheba. She was standing on the
little verandah in the moonlight with the roses all around her; and she
looked so white that I stopped to look up at her."

"Uncle Tom," said Sheba, "we--we knew each other."

"Did you?" said Tom. "That's right."

His middle-aged heart surprised him by giving one quick, soft beat. He
smiled to himself after he had felt it.

"The first moment or so I only stood and looked," Rupert said; "I was
startled."

"And so was I," said Sheba.

"But when she leaned forward and looked down on me," he went on, "I
remembered something----"

"So did I," said Sheba. "I leaned forward like that and looked down at
you from the porch at the tavern--all those years ago, when I was a
little child."

"And I looked up at you--and afterwards I asked about you," said Rupert.
"It all came back when you spoke to-night, and I knew you must be Sheba."

"You knew my name, but I did not know yours," said Sheba. "But, after
all," rather as if consoling herself, "Sheba is not my real name. I have
another one."

"What is it?" asked the young fellow, quite eagerly. His eyes had
scarcely left her face an instant. She was standing by Tom's chair and
her hands were on his shoulders.

"It is Felicia," she said. "Uncle Tom gave it to me--because he wanted me
to be happy." And she curved a slim arm round Tom's neck and kissed him.

It was the simplest, prettiest thing a man could have seen. Her life had
left her nature as pure and translucent as the clearest brook. She had
had no one to compare herself with or to be made ashamed or timid by. She
knew only her own heart and Tom's love, and she smiled as radiantly into
the lighting face before her as she would have smiled at a rose, or at a
young deer she had met in the woods. No one had ever looked at her in
this way before, but being herself a thing which had grown like a flower,
she felt no shyness, and was only glad. Eve might have smiled at Adam so
in their first hours.

Big Tom, sitting between them, saw it all. A man cannot live a score of
years and more, utterly cut off from the life of the world, without
having many a long hour for thought in which he will inevitably find
himself turni