t back into town.

The road Holmes took was rutted deep with wagon-wheels, not easily
travelled; he walked slowly therefore, being weak, stopping now and then
to gather strength. He had not counted the hours until this day, to be
balked now by a little loss of blood. The moon was nearly down before he
reached the Cloughton hills: he turned there into a narrow path which he
remembered well. Now and then he saw the mark of a little shoe in the
snow,--looking down at it with a hot panting in his veins and a strange
flash in his eye, as he walked on steadily.

There was a turn in the path at the top of the hill, a sunken wall, with
a broad stone from which the wind had blown the snow. This was the
place. He sat down on the stone, resting. Just there she had stood,
clutching her little fingers behind her, when he came up and threw back
her hood to look in her face: how pale and worn it was, even then! He
had not looked at her to-night: he would not, if he had been dying, with
those men standing there. He stood alone in the world with this little
Margaret. How those men had carped, and criticized her, chattered of the
duties of her soul! Why, it was his, it was his own, softer and fresher.
There was not a glance with which they followed the weak little body in
its poor dress that he had not seen, and savagely resented. They
measured her strength? counted how long the bones and blood would last
in their House of Refuge? There was not a morsel of her flesh that was
not pure and holy in his eyes. His Margaret? He chafed with an
intolerable fever to make her his, but for one instant, as she had been
once. Now, when it was too late. For he went back over every word he had
spoken that night, forcing himself to go through with it,--every cold,
poisoned word. It was a fitting penance. "There is no such thing as love
in real life": he had told her that! How he had stood, with all the
power of his "divine soul" in his will, and told her,--he,--a man,--that
he put away her love from him then, forever! He spared himself
nothing,--slurred over nothing; spurned himself, as it were, for the
meanness, the niggardly selfishness in which he had wallowed that night.
How firm he had been! how kind! how masterful!--pluming himself on his
man's strength, while he held her in his power as one might hold an
insect, played with her shrinking woman's nature, and trampled it under
his feet, coldly and quietly! She was in his way, and he had put her
as