he has once told a man that she loves
him, he is a little too flushed and exalted with that first draught she
offers him to care much about the taste of the second. He treads the
earth with a very elastic step as he walks away from her, and makes
light of all difficulties. But that sort of glow dies out: memory gets
sadly diluted with time, and is not strong enough to revive us. Adam
was no longer so confident as he had been. He began to fear that perhaps
Dinah's old life would have too strong a grasp upon her for any new
feeling to triumph. If she had not felt this, she would surely have
written to him to give him some comfort; but it appeared that she held
it right to discourage him. As Adam's confidence waned, his patience
waned with it, and he thought he must write himself. He must ask Dinah
not to leave him in painful doubt longer than was needful. He sat up
late one night to write her a letter, but the next morning he burnt it,
afraid of its effect. It would be worse to have a discouraging answer
by letter than from her own lips, for her presence reconciled him to her
will.

You perceive how it was: Adam was hungering for the sight of Dinah, and
when that sort of hunger reaches a certain stage, a lover is likely to
still it though he may have to put his future in pawn.

But what harm could he do by going to Snowfield? Dinah could not be
displeased with him for it. She had not forbidden him to go. She must
surely expect that he would go before long. By the second Sunday in
October this view of the case had become so clear to Adam that he was
already on his way to Snowfield, on horseback this time, for his hours
were precious now, and he had borrowed Jonathan Burge's good nag for the
journey.

What keen memories went along the road with him! He had often been to
Oakbourne and back since that first journey to Snowfield, but beyond
Oakbourne the greystone walls, the broken country, the meagre trees,
seemed to be telling him afresh the story of that painful past which he
knew so well by heart. But no story is the same to us after a lapse of
time--or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters--and
Adam this morning brought with him new thoughts through that grey
country, thoughts which gave an altered significance to its story of the
past.

That is a base and selfish, even a blasphemous, spirit which rejoices
and is thankful over the past evil that has blighted or crushed another,
because it has bee