uld
be small. Nay, I was dead to her, and dead I would remain.

Now I was at the door and my foot was on its step, when suddenly a
voice, Lily's voice, sounded in my ears and it was sweet and kind.

'Thomas,' said the voice, 'Thomas, before you go, will you not take
count of the gold and goods and land that you placed in my keeping?'

Now I turned amazed, and lo! Lily came towards me slowly and with
outstretched arms.

'Oh! foolish man,' she whispered low, 'did you think to deceive a
woman's heart thus clumsily? You who talked of the beech in the Hall
garden, you who found your way so well to this dark chamber, and spoke
the writing in the ring with the very voice of one who has been dead so
long. Listen: I forgive that friend of yours his broken troth, for he
was honest in the telling of his fault and it is hard for man to live
alone so many years, and in strange countries come strange adventures;
moreover, I will say it, I still love him as it seems that he loves me,
though in truth I grow somewhat old for love, who have lingered long
waiting to find it beyond my grave.'

Thus Lily spoke, sobbing as she spoke, then my arms closed round her
and she said no more. And yet as our lips met I thought of Otomie,
remembering her words, and remembering also that she had died by her own
hand on this very day a year ago.

Let us pray that the dead have no vision of the living!

CHAPTER XL

AMEN

And now there is little left for me to tell and my tale draws to
its end, for which I am thankful, for I am very old and writing is a
weariness to me, so great a weariness indeed that many a time during the
past winter I have been near to abandoning the task.

For a while Lily and I sat almost silent in this same room where I write
to-day, for our great joy and many another emotion that was mixed with
it, clogged our tongues. Then as though moved by one impulse, we knelt
down and offered our humble thanks to heaven that had preserved us both
to this strange meeting. Scarcely had we risen from our knees when
there was a stir without the house, and presently a buxom dame entered,
followed by a gallant gentleman, a lad, and a maiden. These were my
sister Mary, her husband Wilfred Bozard, Lily's brother, and their two
surviving children, Roger and Joan. When she guessed that it was I come
home again and no other, Lily had sent them tidings by the servant man
John, that one was with her whom she believed they would be glad t