visible on her face, he shook hands with her
and let her go.

Then he turned. He had been startled, it is true, and grieved to see
the pain her chance words had caused her. But now a great glow of
delight rose up within him, and he could have called aloud to the blue
skies and the silent woods because of the joy that filled his heart.
They were but chance words, of course. They were uttered with no
deliberate intention: on the contrary, her quick look of pain showed
how bitterly she regretted the blunder. Moreover, he congratulated
himself on his rapid piece of acting, and assured himself that she
would believe that he had not noticed that admission of hers. They
were idle words: she would forget them. The incident, so far as she
was concerned, was gone.

But not so far as he was concerned. For now he knew that the person
whom, above all other persons in the world, he was most desirous to
please, whose respect and esteem he was most anxious to obtain, had
not only condoned much of his idleness out of the abundant charity of
her heart, but had further, and by chance, revealed to him that she
gave him some little share of that affection which she seemed to shed
generously and indiscriminately on so many folks and things around
her. He, too, was now in the charmed circle. He walked with a new
pride through the warm, green meadows, his rod over his shoulder: he
whistled as he went, or he sang snatches of "The Rose of Allandale."
He met two small boys out bird's-nesting: he gave them a shilling
apiece, and then inconsistently informed them that if he caught them
then or at any other time with a bird's nest in their hands he would
cuff their ears. Then he walked hastily home, put by his fishing-rod,
and shut himself up in his study with half a dozen of those learned
volumes which he had brought back unsoiled from school.

CHAPTER XXII.

ON WINGS OF HOPE.

When Trelyon arrived late one evening at Penzance he was surprised
to find his uncle's coachman awaiting him at the station: "What's the
matter, Tobias? Is the old gentleman going to die? You don't mean to
say you are here for me?"

"Yaaes, zor, I be," said the little old man with no great courtesy.

"Then he is going to die if he sends out his horse at this time o'
night. Look here, Tobias: I'll put my portmanteau inside and come on
the box to have a talk with you--you're such a jolly old card, you
know--and you'll tell me all that's happened since I last e