was still some thousands of
miles away--in Canada--safely dead and buried, as far as Rachel was
concerned?

On the whole, he thought it most probable that Rachel had held her tongue
about his reappearance. If she had thought it worth while to bribe him so
heavily, it was not very likely that she would now herself have set the
American on the track of a secret which she so evidently did not want an
expectant bridegroom to know.

The American--d--n him! A furious and morbid jealousy rushed upon the man
crouching under the cart-shed. The world was rapidly reducing itself
for him to these two figures--figures of hate--figures against whom he
felt himself driven by a kind of headlong force, a force of destruction.

How still the farm was, except for the movements of the cows inside the
shippen at his back, or of the horses in the stable! Rachel, no doubt,
was now asleep. In the old days he had often--enviously--watched her
tumble asleep as soon as her bright head was on the pillow; while in his
own case sleep had been for years a difficult business.

Somebody else would watch her sleeping now.

Yes, if he, the outcast, allowed it. And again the frenzied sense of
power swept through him. _If he allowed it_! It rested with him.

The following day, Ellesborough set out in the early afternoon for Great
End Farm, the bearer of much news.

The day was dark and rainy, with almost a gale blowing, but his spirits
had never been higher. The exultation of the great victory, the
incredible Victory, seemed to breathe upon him from the gusty wind, to be
driving the westerly clouds, and crying in all the noises of the woods.
Was it really over?--over and done?--the agony of these four years--the
hourly sacrifice of irreplaceable life--the racking doubt as to the
end--the torturing question in every conscious mind--"Is there a God in
Heaven--a God who cares for men--or is there not?"

He could have shouted the answer aloud--"There is--there is a God! And He
is just."

Faith was natural to him, and nourished on his new happiness no less than
on the marvellous issue of the war, it set his heart singing on this dull
winter's day. How should he find her? Threshing, perhaps, in the big
barn, and he would turn to, and work with her and the girls till work was
done, and they could have the sitting-room to themselves, and he could
tell her all his news. Janet--the ever-kind and thoughtful Janet--would
see to that. The more he saw of the f