ould to the world, whether they called him a master among men,
or a miser, or, as Knowles did to-night after he turned away, a
scoundrel, this girl laid her little hand on his soul with an utter
recognition: she alone. "She knew him for a better man than he knew
himself that night:" he remembered the words.

The night was growing murky and bitingly cold: there was no prospect on
the snow-covered hills, or the rough road at his feet with its pools
of ice-water, to bring content into his face, or the dewy light into
his eyes; but they came there, slowly, while he sat thinking. Some old
thought was stealing into his brain, perhaps, fresh and warm, like a
soft spring air,--some hope of the future, in which this child-woman
came close to him, and near. It was an idle dream, only would taunt
him when it was over, but he opened his arms to it: it was an old
friend; it had made him once a purer and better man than he could ever
be again. A warm, happy dream, whatever it may have been: the rugged,
sinister face grew calm and sad, as the faces of the dead change when
loving tears fall on them.

He sighed wearily: the homely little hope was fanning into life
stagnant depths of desire and purpose, stirring his resolute ambition.
Too late? Was it too late? Living or dead she was his, though he
should never see her face, by some subtile power that had made them
one, he knew not when nor how. He did not reason now,--abandoned
himself, as morbid men only do, to this delirious hope of a home, and
cheerful warmth, and this woman's love fresh and eternal: a pleasant
dream at first, to be put away at pleasure. But it grew bolder,
touched under-deeps in his nature of longing and intense passion; all
that he knew or felt of power or will, of craving effort, of success in
the world, drifted into this dream, and became one with it. He stood
up, his vigorous frame starting into a nobler manhood, with the
consciousness of right,--with a willed assurance, that, the first
victory gained, the others should follow.

It was late; he must go on; he had not meant to sit idling by the
road-side. He went through the fields, his heavy step crushing the
snow, a dry heat in his blood, his eye intent, still, until he came
within sight of the farm-house; then he went on, cool and grave, in his
ordinary port.

The house was quite dark; only a light in one of the lower
windows,--the library, he thought. The broad field he was crossing
sloped dow