tting riderless into view. Then she and the maids ran to the wood.
But even after that she still sat at that window at the end of every
day, a familiar figure to all who came and went upon the road.

The sons, Sidney and Laurence, grew up together, passionate, devoted,
and widely loved. Sidney married and went away for a few years; but
presently he came back to his mother and brother, bringing with him the
motherless little Sidney who was Jean's sunny big husband now. This
younger Sidney well remembered the day--and had once told his wife of
it--when his father and his uncle fell to sudden quarrelling in their
boat, during a morning's fishing on the placid river. He remembered, a
small watcher on the bank, that the boat upset, and that, when his
uncle reached the shore, it was to work unavailingly for hours over his
father's silent form, which never moved again. The boy was sent away
for a while, but came back to find his uncle a silent, morose shadow,
pacing the lonely garden in unassailable solitude, or riding his horse
for hours in the great woods. Sometimes the little fellow would sit
with his grandmother in the library window, where she watched and
waited. Always, as he went about the garden and yards, he would look
for her there, and wave his cap to her. He missed her, in his
unexpressed little-boy fashion, when she sat there no longer, although
she had always been silent and reserved with him. Then came his years
of school and travel, and in one of them he learned that the Hall was
quite empty now. Sidney meant to go back, just to turn over the old
books, and open the old doors, and walk the garden paths again; but,
somehow, he had never come until to-day. And now that he had come, he,
and Jean, and Peter, too, wanted to stay.

Jean sighed.

"You knew Madam Carolan, didn't you, Mary?"

"No--no, I didn't," said Mrs. Moore, coloring uneasily. "I've seen her,
though, as a small girl, at the window. I used to visit Billy's--my
husband's--people when we were both small, you know, and we often came
to these woods."

"I've been thinking of the house and its cheerful history," said Jean,
with a little shudder. "Sweet heritage for Peterkin!"

"Heritage--nonsense!" said the other woman, hardily. "Every one tells
me that your husband is the gentlest and finest of them all--and his
father was before him. I don't believe such things come down, anyway."

"Well," smiled Sidney's wife, a little proudly, "I've never seen t