y should one hold anger against another? In pity for
himself and the whole world, his heart ached within him, as a rustling
of gowns and a shuffling of feet told that the worshippers had risen
from their knees and were coming toward him. He raised his bowed head
sadly, fearfully.

First came the merchant, tugging at his long beard as he
advanced,--though whether his meditations were the leavings of the mood
that had held him or a reaching forward into the busy future, none could
tell. Him, Sebert's eye dismissed with a listless glance. Behind the
trader came the yeomen, one of them yawning and stretching noisily, the
other energetically pulling up his belt as one tightens the loosened
girth on a horse that has had an interval of rest. The young noble's
glance leaped them completely in its haste to reach those who
followed,--the knot of women, fluttering and rustling and preening like
a flock of birds. But the bird he sought was not of their number. He
stared blindly at the pilgrim as the wanderer shuffled past, muttering
and beating his breast. Only one figure followed the penitent, and if
that should not be she! Even though he felt that it could not be--even
though he hoped it was not--hoping and fearing, dreading and longing,
his eyes advanced to meet the last of the worshippers.

Only one figure, but all at once it was as though the whole world were
before him!

Coming slowly toward him out of the soft twilight, with eyes downcast
and hands folded nun-like before her, the daughter of Frode did not look
out of place amid blue wreaths of incense and starry altar tapers. Even
her robes were in keeping, gold-weighted as they were, for hood and gown
and fur-bordered mantle were of the deepest heliotrope, that color which
bears the majesty of sorrow while yet it holds within it the rose-tint
of gladness. Beneath its tender shadow the dusk of her hair became
deeper, and her face, robbed by winter of its brownness, took on the
delicacy of a cameo. Ah, what a face it was now, since pain had deepened
its sweetness and patience had purified its ardor! The radiance of a
newly-wakened soul was like a halo around it.

Standing there gazing at her, a wonderful change came over the Lord
of Ivarsdale. Neither then nor ever after could he understand how it
happened, but, all at once, the barrier that circumstances had raised
against her fell like the city walls before the trumpet blast, until
not one stone was left standing upon a