ftest note as it came
from her lips. Now he was well repaid for his nights of traverse on the
hills, his watching, his disappointment! The very night held breath to
listen to that song, not the song that had been sung in the _Jean_, but
another, the song of a child no more, but of a woman, full of passion,
antique love and sorrow, of the unsatisfied and yearning years.

The music ceased; the night for a space swooned into a numb and desolate
silence. Then in the field behind, the last corncrake harshly called; a
shepherd whistled on his dogs; a cart rumbled over the cobbles, making
for the shed. The sound of the river as it came to him among the
alder-trees seemed the sound the wave makes in the ears of the sinking
and exhausted swimmer.

Gilian turned over in his pocket a lucky flint arrowhead, and wished for
a glimpse of Nan.

He had no sooner done so than her shadow showed upon the blind, hurried
and nervous as in some affright.

His heart leaped; he made a step forward as if he would storm that
citadel of his fancy, but he checked himself on a saner thought that he
was imbuing the shadow with fears that were not there. He drew a deep
breath and turned his lucky arrowhead again. For a second or two there
was no response. Then another shadow came upon the blinds--a man's,
striding for a little back and forward, as if in perturbation. Who could
it be? the trembling outsider asked himself. Not the father; there was
no queue to the shadow, and a vague suggestion of the General's voice
had come but a moment before from another part of the steading. Not the
uncle? This was no long, bent, bearded apparition, but the figure of
youth. Gilian promptly fancied himself the substance of the shadow in
that envied light and presence, seeing the glow of fire and candle
in Nan's eyes as she turned to the accepted lover. "Nan, Nan!" he
whispered, "I love you! I love you!"

A faint breath from a new point came through the trees, the dryads
sighing for all this pitiful illusion. It struck chill upon his face;
he shivered and prepared to set off for home across the hill. A last
reluctant glance was thrown at the window, and he had turned towards the
milk-house wall when a sound of opening doors arrested him. Now he could
not escape unobserved; he withdrew into the shadow of the trees again.

The General and another came out and stood midway between the house
and the planting. There they spoke in constrained words that did not at
f