e of the ghost ever came to the
ears of Alison's husband.

His new wife held him indeed in close keeping. In the first days of
his remarriage the servants in the house had whispered that there had
been ill blood over the man between the two women, so strenuously did
the second wife labour to uproot any trace of the first. The cradle
that had been prepared for the young heir was flung to a fishergirl
expecting her base-born baby: the small garments into which Alison had
sewn her tears with the stitches went the same road. There was many an
honest wife might have had the things, but that would not have pleased
the grim humour of the second wife towards the woman she had
supplanted.

Everything that had been Alison's was destroyed or hidden away. Her
rooms were changed out of all memory of her. There was nothing,
nothing in the house to recall to her widower her gentleness, or her
face as he had last seen it, snow-pale and pure between the long
ashen-fair strands of her hair. He never came upon anything that could
give him a tender stab with the thought of her. So she was forgotten,
and the man was happy with his children and his beautiful passionate
wife, and the constant tenderness with which she surrounded every hour
of his life.

Little by little she had won over all who had cause to love the dead
woman,--all human creatures, that is to say: a dog was more faithful
and had resisted her. Alison's dog was a terrier, old, shaggy and
blear-eyed: he had been young with his dead mistress, and had seemed
to grow old when she died. He had fretted incessantly during that year
of her husband's widowhood, whimpering and moaning about the house
like a distraught creature, and following the man in a heavy
melancholy when he made his pilgrimages to the grave. He continued
those pilgrimages after the man had forgotten, but the heavy iron gate
of the Abbey clanged in his face, and since he could not reach the
grave his visits grew fewer and fewer. But he had not forgotten.

The new mistress had put out all her fascinations to win the dog too,
for it seemed that while any living creature clung to the dead woman's
memory her triumph was not complete. But the dog, amenable to every
one else, was savage to her. All her soft overtures were received with
snarling, and an uncovering of the strong white teeth that was
dangerous. The woman was not without a heart, except for the dead, and
the misery of the dog moved her--his restlessness,