met her by accident, perhaps he might; but to watch her, to
entrap her, to break in on her wished-for isolation under false
pretences--all that he suddenly felt to be impossible. He could follow
her with his heart; but the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand,
the smile of her calm, beautiful, dark eyes, were as remote for him as
if she, too, were beyond the broad Atlantic.

He was not much given to introspection and analysis; daring the past two
months more especially he had been far too busy to be perpetually asking
"Why? why?"--the vice of indolence. It was enough that, in the cold and
the wet, there was a fire in his heart that kept him glad with thinking
of the fair days to come; and that, in the foggy afternoons or the
lonely nights when he was alone, and perhaps despondent or impatient
over the stupidity or the contumacy he had had to encounter, there came
to him the soft murmur of a voice from far away--proud, sad, and yet
full of consolation and hope:

"--But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant,
Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present,
That clothe yourself with the cold future air;
When mother and father, and tender sister and brother,
And the old live love that was shall be as ye,
Dust and no fruit of loving life shall be.
--She shall be yet who is more than all these were,
Than sister or wife or father unto us, or mother."

He could hear her voice: he could see the beautiful face grow pale with
its proud fervor; he could feel the soft touch of her hand when she
came forward and said, "Brother, I welcome you!"

And now that she was there before him, the gladness in his heart at the
mere sight of her was troubled with a trembling fear and pain. She was
but a stone's-throw in front of him; but she seemed far away. The world
was young around her; and she belonged to the time of youth and of
hope; life, that he had been ready to give up as a useless and aimless
thing, was only opening out before her, full of a thousand beauties, and
wonders, and possibilities. If only he could have taken her hand, and
looked into her eyes, and claimed that smile of welcome, he would have
been nearer to her. Surely, in one thing at least they were in sympathy.
There was a bond between them. If the past had divided them, the future
would bring them more together. Did not the Pilgrims go by in bands,
until death struck down its victims here and there?