CHAPTER XXIV. IT THE TINKLE OF A TINY BELL. Left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's nest, filled with snow." "Once the hungry Hours were hounds, Wordsworth. Which chased the day like a bleeding deer, Shelley. T was two years later. Sophia and I were on a railway train, drawing near, for the first time since those sad days, to the great city which had been our home before we went to spend that summer at South Berwick. The two years had been passed in a little Canadian village, where Sophia had relations. When I began to recover from the fever which succeeded the days of the trial, it was necessary to take me somewhere, the farther away the better, the doctors said; the greater change the better. The Emlyns would gladly have kept me with them; their kindness was unbounded. But I felt too stricken to bear the touch of even such tender hands as theirs. I was out of place where there was life and youth and hope. I knew it was not right to darken any household with my sorrow; my good friends had already borne too much of it. When Sophia, one day, spoke of this far-away little village, where her relations lived, I grasped at it. It seemed to me more like the rest of the grave than anything that I could get this side of it. "Let us go there,” I said. The quiet, the utter seclusion, the unfamiliarity of everything, the keen, bracing cold of the climate, all combined to heal me of my wounds. At the end of two years I was alive, I was sane, I was well. Sophia had grown restless under the long quiet. I did not want to be selfish. I told her we would come back. During the two years, the Emlyns had gone abroad. At first I got frequent letters from them, but latterly they had written very little. Colonel Emlyn's health had been a cause of great anxiety to his wife. The excitement of the events of that last month at South Berwick had been very severe upon him at his age. He had never been willing to return to Happy-go-lucky; the place was shut up and offered for sale. He was restless, and suffered from loss of memory, and from sleeplessness; I could see Mrs. Emlyn felt a sword was hanging over her. I did not write often to them, for two causes; first, that it was acute pain to me to write a letter, and secondly, that I thought it really kinder to let all that was connected with that dreadful time die out, and not to bring myself up at all to him in his present state. And about Macnally. Colonel Emlyn had been very kind in trying to satisfy my desire of getting a letter to him. But after many weeks, my poor letter had come back to me. No trace of him could be found. In the hurried parting between him and Hardinge, only some vague promise had been made of writing; he had given no address. It was not to be expected that he should write to the Emlyns. Colonel Emlyn, with all his de sire to save him, had had but one conviction from the first; and he was too honest a man to be able to hide it. That he had not given him his hand when the verdict was pronounced; that he had not in the time that intervened between that and his sailing, made some expression of friendship or congratulation, was enough to account for his silence towards them. No doubt he was convinced that there was no dissenting voice; that no one believed in his innocence of all who had been his friends that summer. But that he had no word for his counsel, who, humanly speaking, had saved his life, was less accountable. The expenses of his trial had all been met by the salary which he had not touched during his ten months at Colonel Emlyn's, and by remittances, which, no doubt, he had received in the last letters which had come, and of which he had spoken to me. There was no obligation upon him to write, but the sense of gratitude to one who had spent so much effort in his service. "I own," wrote Mr. Hardinge, in answer to Colonel Emlyn's inquiries, "I did look for a line of acknowledgment from him when he should have reached home, but none has ever come. In fact, my dear sir, I don't, at this moment, know whom I defended, any more than if I had done it in a dream. But for the strong impression that the man made on me, I should begin to feel some doubt of him." For me, there was but one conviction-that he was no longer living. It was a cloudy day in late October; the very last day of the month. Our long journey was drawing near its end; an hour more, and we should be in the city. Sophia was in the seat beside me. I was next the window, looking out over the broad river, now gray with the approach of evening. The jar and noise of the cars was considerable, but not enough to make it difficult to talk with the person sitting next you. I had something to say to Sophia. I had been thinking of it for a great many days, and had chosen this moment for the saying of it. It was easier to say what I wanted to in this place, than in a quiet room. For one thing, we need not look at each other as we talked, and there was no possibility of showing agitation on either side. (It is necessary to explain that Sophia and I never alluded, in any manner, to the cause of the desolation of our lives. After the children's clothes were packed away, and their books and toys put out of sight, there was never a word uttered between us that would have indicated to any stranger the fact that they ever had existed. Her wound was only less grievous than mine. It was an instinct of self-preservation that kept us silent. If we were to live, that was the only way to do it. We must make a new routine for ourselves, and keep to it. It was the only chance of keeping from despair.) So it was with great effort that I spoke, looking out of the window as I did it. "You will be very busy to-morrow, I suppose, settling the rooms, and all that. I never was much use in doing that. I'm going to take the chance, and go away for a day and night." I scarcely had been out of her sight an hour since 1 Lad been all she had to care for. No wonder that she started. "Yes," I said, as firmly as I could, "I want to go to South Berwick. It has been in my mind a great while. This is the best time." "You'd better wait till you're rested from this jour ney," she said, hoarsely, "before you take another." "No; I am well enough for it. I will go in the morning. There is a train at eight o'clock. I looked it out in the paper yesterday." There was not another word said. We sat in utter silence, side by side, as the cars rushed on into the twilight. The plan, which I had told her so quietly, had been maturing in my mind for weeks; it scarcely ever left my thoughts. The desire to see the children's graves before another snow fell on them, had grown so strong, that I felt as if she must have known it, in our daily life together. She had expressed no emotion; but her face, when we came out into the light of the depot, after leaving the cars, showed the traces of strong agitation. Sophia's face had grown older in these two years. It had come to go well with her prematurely-whitened hair. She looked a woman of fifty, who had seen trouble, and whose heart had known how to ache. She was more silent now, and her silence gave a deep look to her eyes. Those still vehement feelings of hers left a mark upon her face-the more that they found no vent from her lips. She prepared everything for my journey, and was up in the gray dawn to get my breakfast for me and to see me go, but no further word was spoken between us of the object of my going. A bleak wind was The day was raw and cheerless. blowing and the clouds were racing over the sky, sky and clouds all gray and leaden. All around the horizon there was a streak of light as if a great chalice of gloom |