plaintive with the foreshadowings of a coming winter--the sunset hues,
the lights and shadows, the first decaying leaves, the notes of birds,
the hum of insects. Everything was very still as Mary again trod the
little path from the cottage of the poor woman whom she had been
visiting on the evening of Frank's last sad fall. She had nearly
reached the stile, her eyes bent on the ground, and her heart full of
sorrowful memories and forebodings, when she was startled by hearing the
sound of passionate sobbings. She raised her eyes. Kneeling by the
stile, his head buried in his hands, was Frank Oldfield; his whole frame
shook with the violence of his emotion, and she could hear her own name
murmured again and again in the agony of his self-reproach or prayer.
How sadly beautiful he looked! And oh, how her heart overflowed with
pitying tenderness towards him.

"Frank," she said; but she could add no more.

He started up, for he had not heard her light tread. His hair was
wildly tossed back, his eyes filled with tears, his lips quivering.

"You here, Mary," he gasped. "I little thought of this. I little
thought to meet you here. I came to take a parting look at the spot
where I had seen you last as my own. Here it was that I sinned and
fooled away my happiness, and here I would pour out the bitterness of my
fruitless sorrow."

"Not fruitless sorrow, I trust, dear Frank," she said gently. "It
cannot be fruitless, if it be a genuine sorrow for sin. Oh, perhaps
there is hope before us yet!"

"Do _you_ say so, Mary? Do _you_ bid me hope? Well, I will live on
that hope. I ask no promise from you, I do not expect it. I am glad
that we have met here, after all. Here you have seen both my
degradation and my sorrow."

"Yes, Frank, and I am glad, too; it will connect this sad spot with
brighter memories. God bless you. I shall never cease to pray for you,
come what will. May that comfort you, and may you--may you,--" her
tears choked her voice.

"Oh, one word more," he said imploringly, as, having accepted his arm in
climbing the stile, she now relinquished it, and was turning from
him--"One word more--one word of parting! Oh, one word such as once
might have been!"

His hands were stretched towards her. They might never meet again. She
hesitated for an instant. Then for one moment they were pressed heart
to heart, and lip to lip--but for one moment, and then,-- "Farewell,"
"Farewell."

CHAPTER