's will. If God really existed, and
if He willed war, and sudden death--then there must be another life. Or
else the power that devised the world was not a good, but an evil--at
best, a blind one.

But while his young brain was racing through the old puzzles in the old
ways, Nelly was thinking of something quite different. Her delicate
small face kept breaking into little smiles with pensive intervals--till
at last she broke out--

'Do you remember how I caught you--turning back to look after us--just
here--just about here? You had passed that thorn tree--'

He came back to love-making with delight.

'"Caught me!" I like that! As if you weren't looking back too! How else
did you know anything about me?'

He had taken his seat beside her on the rock, and her curly black head
was nestling against his shoulder. There was no one on the mountain
path, no one on the lake. Occasionally from the main road on the
opposite shore there was a passing sound of wheels. Otherwise the world
was theirs--its abysses of shadow, its 'majesties of light.'

She laughed joyously, not attempting to contradict him. It was on this
very path, just two months before the war, that they had first seen each
other. She with her father and Bridget were staying at Mrs. Weston's
lodgings, because she, Nelly, had had influenza, and the doctor had sent
her away for a change. They knew the Lakes well already, as is the way
of Manchester folk. Their father, a hard-worked, and often melancholy
man, had delighted in them, summer and winter, and his two girls had
trudged about the fells with him year after year, and wanted nothing
different or better. At least, Nelly had always been content. Bridget
had grumbled often, and proposed Blackpool, or Llandudno, or Eastbourne
for a change. But their father did not like 'crowds.' They came to the
Lakes always before or after the regular season. Mr. Cookson hated the
concourse of motorists in August, and never would use one himself. Not
even when they went from Ambleside to Keswick. They must always walk, or
go by the horse-coach.

Nelly presently looked up, and gave a little pull to the corner of her
husband's moustache.

'Of course you know you behaved abominably that next day at Wythburn!
You kept that whole party waiting while you ran after us. And I hadn't
dropped that bag. You knew very well I hadn't dropped it!'

He chuckled.

'It did as well as anything else. I got five minutes' talk with you. I
fo