the comfort of the second
prisoner, in whom they had found an old friend, that, tied in a blanket
and lying full length on the straw of a box-sleigh, he looked content
with himself and the world, albeit he had not as yet returned from the
happy roving-places of the drunken brain. The talkative clerk was glad
enough to give Courthope the reins of the masterful horses; he sat on
one edge of the blue-painted box and Courthope on the other; thus they
started, bravely plunging into the drifts between the poplars. The
drifts were all tinged with pink; the poplars, intercepting the red
light upon their slender upright boughs, cast, each of them, a clear
shadow that seemed to lie in endless length athwart the glowing sward.

Courthope looked back at the house which had been so dim and
phantom-like the night before; the red sun lit the icicles that hung
from eaves and lintels, tinged the drifts, glowed upon the windows as if
with light from within, and turned the steep tin roof into a gigantic
rose; but all his glance was centred upon his lady-love, who stood,
regardless of the cold, at the entrance of the drift-encircled porch and
watched them as long as the sunlight lay upon the land. Was she looking
at the plunging sleigh and at its driver, or at the chasms of light in
the rent cloud beyond? His heart told him, as he drove on into the very
midst of the sunset which had embraced the glistening land, that the
maid, although not regardless of the outer glory, only rejoiced in its
beauty because the vision of her heart was focused upon him. His heart,
in telling him this, taught him no pride, for had he not learned in the
same small space of time only to count himself rich in what she gave?

Slow was the progress of the great horses; they passed the grove of high
elms and birches that, dressed in the snowflakes that had lodged in
boughs and branches when the wind dropped, stood up clear against the
gulfs of blue that now opened above and beyond. Then the house was
hidden, and after that, by degrees, the light of the sunset passed away.

THE END.

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh

* * * * *

ADVERTISEMENTS

A MAN OF HONOUR.

H. C. IRWIN.

Crown 8vo, cloth, price 6s.

'We have read many and many a story of the Indian Mutiny, but Mr.
Irwin's tale has novelty all its own.'--_Glasgow Herald._

'Much good and careful work marks "A Man of Honour." H. C. Irwin is