dropping tears of a mourning world.

M'Adam listened, almost reverently, as the bell tolled on, the only
sound in the quiet Dale. Outside, a drizzling rain was falling; the
snow dribbled down the hill in muddy tricklets; and trees and roofs and
windows dripped.

And still the bell tolled on, calling up relentlessly sad memories of
the long ago.

It was on just such another dreary day, in just such another December,
and not so many years gone by, that the light had gone forever out of
his life.

The whole picture rose as instant to his eyes as if it had been but
yesterday. That insistent bell brought the scene surging back to him:
the dismal day; the drizzle; the few mourners; little David decked out
in black, his fair hair contrasting with his gloomy clothes, his face
swollen with weeping; the Dale hushed, it seemed in death, save for the
tolling of the bell; and his love had left him and gone to the happy
land the hymn-books talk of.

Red Wull, who had been watching him uneasily, now came up and shoved
his muzzle into his master's hand. The cold touch brought the little man
back to earth. He shook himself, turned wearily away from the window,
and went to the door of the house.

He stood there looking out; and all round him was the eternal drip, drip
of the thaw. The wind lulled, and again the minute-bell tolled out clear
and inexorable, resolute to recall what was and what had been.

With a choking gasp the little man turned into the house, and ran up the
stairs and into his room. He dropped on his knees beside the great chest
in the corner, and unlocked the bottom drawer, the key turning noisily
in its socket.

In the drawer he searched with feverish fingers, and produced at length
a little paper packet wrapped about with a stained yellow ribbon. It was
the ribbon she had used to weave on Sundays into her soft hair.

Inside the packet was a cheap, heart-shaped frame, and in it a
photograph.

Up there it was too dark to see. The little man ran down the stairs, Red
Wull jostling him as he went, and hurried to the window in the kitchen.

It was a sweet, laughing face that looked up at him from the frame,
demure yet arch, shy yet roguish--a face to look at and a face to love.

As he looked a wintry smile, wholly tender, half tearful, stole over the
little man's face.

"Lassie," he whispered, and his voice was infinitely soft, "it's lang
sin' I've daured look at ye. But it's no that ye're forgotten, dearie.