e song,
To answer the morning stars,
And the hand of man on the anvil rang;
His breath was big in his breast, his life
Beat strong on the walls of the world.
(Glad is the wind and tall is the fire.)"

He put his hands to his eyes, and took them away again, as though to
make sure that the song was not a dream. Wonder grew upon his thin,
bearded face, he ran his fingers through his thick hair in a dazed way.
Then he lay and looked, and a rich warm flush crept over his cheek, and
stayed there.

There was a great gap in his memory.

The evening wore on. Once or twice the woman turned towards the room
where the man lay, and listened--she could not see his face from where
she stood. At such times he lay still, though his heart beat quickly,
like that of an expectant child. His lips opened to speak, but still
they remained silent. As yet he was like a returned traveller who does
not quickly recognise old familiar things, and who is struggling with
vague suggestions and forgotten events. As time went on, the woman
turned towards the doorway oftener, and shifted her position so that she
faced it, and the sparks, flying up, lighted her face with a wonderful
irregular brightness.

"Samantha," he said at last, and his voice sounded so strange to him
that the word quivered timidly towards her.

She paused upon a stroke, and some new note in his voice sent so sudden
a thrill to her heart that she caught her breath with a painful kind of
joy. The hammer dropped upon the anvil, and, in a moment, she stood in
the doorway of his room.

"Francis, Francis," she responded in a low whisper. He started up from
his couch of skins. "Samantha, my wife!" he cried, in a strong proud
voice.

She dropped beside him and caught his head, like a mother, to her
shoulder, and set her warm lips on his forehead and hair with a kind of
hunger; and then he drew her face down and kissed her on the lips. Tears
hung at her eyes, and presently dropped on her cheeks, a sob shook her,
and then she was still, her hands grasping his shoulders.

"Have I been ill?" he asked.

"You have been very ill, Francis."

"Has it been long?"

Her fingers passed tenderly through his grizzled hair. "Too long, too
long, my husband," she replied.

"Is it summer now?"

"Yes, Francis, it is summer."

"Was it in the spring, Samantha?--Yes, I think it was in the spring," he
added, musing.

"It was in a spring."

"There wa