prevented by the wizened Elder
Meacham. When it seemed as if the aching, throbbing sweetness must
surely bring denunciation, David changed the music to a slow mourning
cadence. It was a wail of sorrow, a march to the grave, a benediction,
a soft sound of farewell, floating through the room and dying away into
the mid-day sun.

There came a long silence after, and David sat with unmoving look upon
the distant prospect through the window. A woman's sob broke the air.
Faith's handkerchief was at her eyes. Only one quick sob, but it
had been wrung from her by the premonition suddenly come that the
brother--he was brother more than nephew--over whom her heart had
yearned had, indeed, come to the cross-roads, and that their ways would
henceforth divide. The punishment or banishment now to be meted out to
him was as nothing. It meant a few weeks of disgrace, of ban, of what,
in effect, was self-immolation, of that commanding justice of the
Society which no one yet save the late Earl of Eglington had defied.
David could refuse to bear punishment, but such a possibility had never
occurred to her or to any one present. She saw him taking his punishment
as surely as though the law of the land had him in its grasp. It was not
that which she was fearing. But she saw him moving out of her life. To
her this music was the prelude of her tragedy.

A moment afterwards Luke Claridge arose and spoke to David in austere
tones: "It is our will that thee begone to the chair-maker's but upon
the hill till three months be passed, and that none have speech with
thee after sunset to-morrow even."

"Amen," said all the Elders.

"Amen," said David, and put his flute into his pocket, and rose to go.

CHAPTER III. BANISHED

The chair-maker's hut lay upon the north hillside about half-way between
the Meeting-house at one end of the village and the common at the other
end. It commanded the valley, had no house near it, and was sheltered
from the north wind by the hill-top which rose up behind it a hundred
feet or more. No road led to it--only a path up from the green of the
village, winding past a gulley and the deep cuts of old rivulets now
over grown by grass or bracken. It got the sun abundantly, and it was
protected from the full sweep of any storm. It had but two rooms, the
floor was of sanded earth, but it had windows on three sides, east,
west, and south, and the door looked south. Its furniture was a plank
bed, a few shelves, a ben