ide. How the fine subtile spirit had risen up out of its agony of
shame, and scorned him! How it had flashed from the puny frame standing
there in the muddy road despised and jeered at, and calmly judged him!
He might go from her as he would, toss her off like a worn-out
plaything, but he could not blind her: let him put on what face he would
to the world, whether they called him a master among men, or a miser,
or, as Knowles did to-night after he turned away, a scoundrel, this girl
laid her little hand on his soul with an utter recognition: she alone.
"She knew him for a better man than he knew himself that night": he
remembered the words.

The night was growing murky and bitingly cold: there was no prospect on
the snow-covered hills, or the rough road at his feet with its pools of
ice-water, to bring content into his face, or the dewy light into his
eyes; but they came there, slowly, while he sat thinking. Some old
thought was stealing into his brain, perhaps, fresh and warm, like a
soft spring air,--some hope of the future, in which this child-woman
came close to him and near. It was an idle dream, only would taunt him
when it was over, but he opened his arms to it: it was an old friend; it
had made him once a purer and better man than he could ever be again. A
warm, happy dream, whatever it may have been: the rugged, sinister face
grew calm and sad, as the faces of the dead change when loving tears
fall on them.

He sighed wearily: the homely little hope was fanning into life stagnant
depths of desire and purpose, stirring his resolute ambition. Too late?
Was it too late? Living or dead she was his, though he should never see
her face, by some subtile power that had made them one, he knew not when
nor how. He did not reason now,--abandoned himself, as morbid men only
do, to this delirious hope, simple and bonny, of a home, and cheerful
warmth, and this woman's love fresh and eternal: a pleasant dream at
first, to be put away at pleasure. But it grew bolder, touched
under-deeps in his nature of longing and intense passion; all that he
knew or felt of power or will, of craving effort, of success in the
world, drifted into this dream and became one with it. He stood up, his
vigorous frame starting into a nobler manhood, with the consciousness of
right,--with a willed assurance, that, the first victory gained, the
others should follow.

It was late; he must go on; he had not meant to sit idling by the
road-side. He w