ave shared his
secret, and so shared his culpability before them all, was a wound which
would take long to heal.

She laid her hand upon his shoulder suddenly with a nervous little
motion.

"And the will of God thee shall do to His honour, though thee is outcast
to-day.... But, Davy, the music-thee kept it from me."

He looked up at her steadily; he read what was in her mind.

"I hid it so, because I would not have thy conscience troubled. Thee
would go far to smother it for me; and I was not so ungrateful to thee.
I did it for good to thee."

A smile passed across her lips. Never was woman so grateful, never wound
so quickly healed. She shook her head sadly at him, and stilling the
proud throbbing of her heart, she said:

"But thee played so well, Davy!"

He got up and turned his head away, lest he should laugh outright. Her
reasoning--though he was not worldly enough to call it feminine, and
though it scarce tallied with her argument--seemed to him quite her own.

"How long have we?" he said over his shoulder. "The sun is yet five
minutes up, or more," she said, a little breathlessly, for she saw his
hand inside his coat, and guessed his purpose.

"But thee will not dare to play--thee will not dare," she said, but more
as an invitation than a rebuke. "Speech was denied me here, but not my
music. I find no sin in it."

She eagerly watched him adjust the flute. Suddenly she drew to him the
chair from the doorway, and beckoned him to sit down. She sat where she
could see the sunset.

The music floated through the room and down the hillside, a searching
sweetness.

She kept her face ever on the far hills. It went on and on. At last it
stopped. David roused himself, as from a dream. "But it is dark!"
he said, startled. "It is past the time thee should be with me. My
banishment began at sunset."

"Are all the sins to be thine?" she asked calmly. She had purposely let
him play beyond the time set for their being together.

"Good-night, Davy." She kissed him on the cheek. "I will keep the music
for the sin's remembrance," she added, and went out into the night.

CHAPTER IV. THE CALL

"England is in one of those passions so creditable to her moral sense,
so illustrative of her unregulated virtues. We are living in the first
excitement and horror of the news of the massacre of Christians
at Damascus. We are full of righteous and passionate indignation.
'Punish--restore the honour of the Christian na