lf with casting small twigs on the fire.

"A few waste victuals, if it like you, Mistress. They will be better
than I deserve."

"And if it like me not?" saith Aunt _Joyce_, suddenly, turning back to
him, and methought there was a little trembling in her voice.

"Then," saith he, "I will trouble you no further."

"Then," saith she, to mine amaze, "I tell thee plainly I will not give
them to such a sinner as thou hast been, by thine own confession."

"Be it so," he saith quietly, bowing his white head. "I cry you mercy
for having troubled you, and I wish you a good morrow."

"That shalt thou never," came from Aunt _Joyce_, in a voice which was
not hers. "Didst thou count _I_ was blind? _Leonard_, _Leonard_!"

And she clasped his hands in hers, and drew him back to the fireside.

"`Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and bring hither the
fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry. For this my love
was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.' My God, I
thank Thee!"

And then, out of the white hair and the blind blue eyes, slowly came
back to me the face of that handsome gentleman which had so near
beguiled our _Milisent_ to her undoing, and had wrought such ill in
_Derwentdale_.

"_Joyce_!" he saith, in a greatly agitated voice. "I would never have
come hither, had I reckoned thou shouldst wit me."

"Thou wert out of thy reckoning, then," she answereth. "I tell thee, as
I told _Dulcie_ years agone, that were I low laid in my grave, I should
hear thy step upon the mould above me."

"I came," he saith, "but to hear thy voice once afore I die. Look upon
thy face can I never more. But I thought to hear the voice of the only
woman which ever loved me in very truth, and unto whom my wrong-doing is
the heaviest sin in all my black calendar."

"Pardoned sin should not be heavy," saith she.

"Nay," quoth Mr _Norris_, "but it is the heaviest of all."

"Come in, _Leonard_," saith Aunt _Joyce_, tenderly.

"Nay, my merciful _Joyce_, let me not trouble thee," saith he, "for if
thou canst not see it in my face, I know in mine heart that I am struck
for death."

"I have seen it," she made answer. "And thou shalt spend thy last days
no whither but in the Manor House at _Minster Lovel_, nor with any other
nurse nor sister than _Joyce Morrell_. _Leonard_, for forty years I
have prayed for this day. Dash not the cup from my lips ere I have well
tasted its sweetness."

I cau