arcely hiding a beloved face. It would not have startled
her if she had seen her father come to the door, beckoning to her with
his quiet smile, or if she had caught sight of Roland Sefton crossing
the moor, with his swift, strong stride, and his face all aglow with
the delight of his mountain ramble.

"But they are both dead," she said to herself. "If only Mr. Roland had
been living in Riversborough he would have told me what to do."

She was too young to connect her father's death in any way with Roland
Sefton's crime. They two were the dearest persons in the world to her;
and both were now gone into the mysterious darkness of the next world,
meeting there perhaps with all earthly discords forgiven and forgotten
more perfectly than they could have been here. She remembered how her
father's dull, joyless face used to brighten when Roland was talking to
him--talking with slow, unaccustomed fingers, which the dumb man would
watch intently, and catch the meaning of the phrase before it was half
finished, flashing back an eager answer by signs and changeful
expression of his features. There would be no need of signs and gestures
where they had gone. Her father, perhaps, was speaking to him now.

Phebe had passed into a reverie, as full of pleasure as of pain, and
she fancied she heard her father's voice--that voice which she had never
heard. She started, and awoke herself. It was growing dusk, and she was
faint with hunger and fatigue. The wintry sun had sunk some time since
behind the brow of the hill, leaving only a few faint lines of clouds
running across a clear amber light. She stepped down from the
horse-block reluctantly, and with slow steps loitered up the garden-path
to the deserted cottage.

It might have been better, she thought, if she had let Mrs. Nixey come
home with her; but, oh, how tired she was of her aimless chatter, which
seemed to din the ear and drive away all quiet thought from the heart.
She had been very weary of all the fuss that had made a Babel of the
little homestead since her father's death. But now she was absolutely
alone, the loneliness seemed awful.

It was quite dark before the fire burned up and threw its flickering
light over her old home. She sat down on the hearth opposite her
father's empty chair, in her own place--the place which had been hers
ever since she could remember. How long would it be hers? She knew that
one volume of her life was ended and closed; the new volume was a