was due back again the weather cleared a little--between
majestic clouds sweeping along like galleons, appeared a stretch of
pure blue sky.

Perhaps it was some association of childhood, some impression she had
gained, then, from a hymn speaking of death; but that bright blue sky
made her suddenly think with an acute vividness of the woman who was
dead. Where was Miss Ethel? What was she doing now?

Caroline's eyes remained fixed on the blue, but her mind had gone
searching into the unknown; she was really groping her way, for the
first time, across the barriers that lie between this life and the life
of the world to come. Her soul really was trying to follow the soul of
one already on the other side. Thus, strangely, it was Miss
Ethel--buffeted and overcome by change--who led Caroline to this first
glimpse of the unchanging.

But these things do not become a conscious part of experience until
long afterwards; so Caroline went home to her tea without knowing what
had happened--only thinking rather more regretfully and kindly than
before about Miss Ethel.

_Chapter XXI_

_St. Martin's Summer_

The storm gave place to still weather the day before Miss Ethel's
funeral. But that was all now over, so was the Sunday morning sermon
wherein the Vicar referred to the good works of the departed, and
during which members of the congregation felt for their
pocket-handkerchiefs who had not troubled to go near the Cottage for
months, or perhaps years.

Though this had happened some days ago the fine weather still held, and
Laura had persuaded Mrs. Bradford to come down to the now deserted
promenade for a little change of scene. They sat silent on the long
bench; Mrs. Bradford a little overdone in her heavy black clothes on
such an unexpectedly warm morning, and Laura looking at a sea which
once more broke in harmless little glittering waves on the firm sand.
The storm had dashed the water right up to the sea-wall, washing away
all traces of the Thorhaven season from that part of the shore, while
on the promenade itself butterflies fluttered among the flower beds
devastated by wind and rain. Far away down the beach, she saw the
donkeys which had been ridden by children all the summer to the
hootings of donkey boys, but they now plodded sedately with gravel in
panniers on their backs up the cliff path, just as their ancestors had
done for centuries past. It seemed really as if some power too immense
for constant