ame beladen, and there were
brought to her pamphlets, papers, cards, letters, telegrams, a fine
variety of praise, abuse, sympathy, derision, insults, and admiration.
Quietly Beth read, and knew what it meant, all of it--success! and
the success she had most desired: that her words should come with
comfort to thousands of those that suffer, who, when they heard, would
raise their heads once more in hope. In one paper that she opened she
read: "A great teacher has arisen among us, a woman of genius--"
Hastily she put the paper aside, burning with a kind of shame,
although alone, to see so much said of herself. Beth was one of the
first swallows of the woman's summer. She was strange to the race when
she arrived, and uncharitably commented upon; but now the type is
known, and has ceased to surprise.

When she was dressed that morning, she went down to her bright little
breakfast parlour. Before her was the harvest-field, looking its
loveliest in the early morning sunlight. As she contemplated the
peaceful scene, she thought that she should feel herself a singularly
fortunate being. The dead would be with her no more, alas! except in
the spirit; but all else that heart could desire, was it not hers? The
answer came quick, No! Something was wanting. But she did not ask
herself what the something was.

The harvesters were not at work that morning, and she had not seen a
soul since she sat down to breakfast; but before she left the table, a
horseman came out from the farm, and rode towards her across the long
field, deliberately. She watched him, absently at first, but as he
approached he reminded her of the Knight of her daily vision, her
saviour, who had come to rescue her in the dark days of her deep
distress at Slane--

"A bowshot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves."

"The barley-sheaves!" suddenly Beth's heart throbbed and fluttered and
stood still. The words had come to her as the interpretation of an
augury, the fulfilment of a promise. It seemed as if she ought to have
known it from the first, known that he would come like that at last,
that he had been coming, coming, coming through all the years. As he
drew near, the rider looked up at her, the sun shone on his face, he
raised his hat. In dumb emotion, not knowing what she did, Beth
reached out her hands towards him as if to welcome him. He was not the
Knight of her dark days, however, this son of the morning, but the
Knight of h