But he took the seat opposite to her and leaned back, shutting his eyes while Miss Amory's rested upon him. The life and beauty which had been such ever-present characteristics of his personality seemed to have left him never to return. Miss Amory's old nerves were strung taut. She had passed through many phases of feeling with regard to him as the years had gone by. During those years she had believed that she knew a hidden thing of him known by no other person. She had felt herself a sort of silent detective in the form of an astute old New England gentlewoman. She had abhorred and horribly pitied him. She had the clear judicial mind which must inevitably see the tragic pitifulness of things. She had thought too much to be able to indulge in the primitive luxury of unqualified condemnation. As she watched him to-day during their drive through the streets, she realised that she beheld a kind of suffering not coming under the head of any ordinary classification. It was a hopeless, ghastly thing, a breaking up of life, a tearing loose of all the cords to which a man might anchor his existence.

When they reached the house and entered the parlour, she went to her chair and sat down--and waited. She knew she was waiting, and believed she knew what for. In a vague way she had always felt that an hour like this would come to them. They were somehow curiously akin. Baird began to walk to and fro. His lips were trembling. Presently he turned towards the rigid figure in the chair and stood still.

"It was not an accident," he said. "He killed himself."

"That I felt sure of," Miss Amory answered. "Tell me why he did it."

Baird began to tremble a little himself.

"Yes, I will," he said. "I must. I suppose--there is a sort of hysteric luxury in--confession. He did it because there was nothing else left. The foundations of his world had been torn from under his feet. Everything was gone." His voice broke into a savage cry. "Oh! in one short lifetime--the black misery a man can bring about!"

"Yes," said Miss Amory.

He threw himself into a chair near her.

"For years--years," he said, "he hid a secret." Miss Amory bent forward.

She felt she must help him a little--for pity's sake.

"Was it the secret of Margery?" she half whispered.

"Did you know it?"

"When a woman has spent a long life alone, thinking--thinking," she answered, "she has had time to learn to observe and to work at problems.

The day she fainted in the street and I took her home in my carriage, I began to fear--to guess. She was not only a girl who was ill--she was a child who was being _killed_ with some horror; she was heart-breaking. I used to go and see her. In the end I knew."

"I--did not," he said, looking at her with haggard eyes.

There was a long pause. She knew he had told her all in the one sentence--all she had guessed.

"She did not know I knew," she went on, presently. "She believed no one knew. Oh, I tell you again, she was heart-breaking! She did not know that there were wild moments when she dropped words that could be linked into facts and formed into a chain."

"Had you formed it," he asked, "when you wrote and told me she had died?"

"Yes. It had led me to you--to nothing more. I felt death had saved her from what would have been worse. It seemed as if--the blackest devil--would be glad to know."

"I am the blackest devil, perhaps," he said, with stony helplessness, "but when I received your letter I was grovelling on my knees praying that I might get back to her--and atone--as far as a black devil could."

"And she was _dead_," said Miss Amory, wringing her hands together on her lap; "dead--dead."

She stopped suddenly and turned on him. "He killed himself," she cried, "because he found out that it was _you_!"

"Yes. I was the one man he loved--he had told his secret to me--to _me!_--the black devil. Now--now I must go to his mother, day after day, and be her son--because I was his friend--and knew his love for Margery--and of her sweetness--and her happy, peaceful death. He used to talk to me for hours; she--poor, tender soul--will talk to me again--of Margery--Margery--Margery--and of Lucien, whose one happiness I was."

"It will--almost--be--enough," said Miss Amory, slowly.

"Yes," he answered; "it will almost be enough--even for a black devil."

And he turned on his chair and laid his face on his folded arms and sobbed like a woman.

CHAPTER XLII

The springtime sunshine had been smiling upon Talbot's Cross-roads all the day. It was not hot, but warm, and its beauty was added to by the little soft winds which passed through the branches of the blossoming apple and pear trees and shook the fragrance from them. The brown earth was sweet and odorous, as it had been on the Sunday morning Sheba had knelt and kissed it, and the garden had covered itself, as then, with hyacinths and daffodils and white narcissus.

During the last weeks the Cross-roads had existed in something like a state of delirium. People rode in from the mountains and returned to their homes after hours of conversation, semi-stupefied with enjoyment.

Tom D'Willerby had won his claims. After months of mystified discouragement, in which the Cross-roads seemed to have lost him in a vague and distant darkness, life had seemed to begin again. Nobody was sufficiently analytical of mind to realise in what measure big Tom D'Willerby had been the centre of the community, which was scattered over miles of mountain road and wood and clearing. But when he had disappeared many things seemed to melt away with him. In fact, a large, shrewd humanity was missing.

"I'll be doggered," had been a remark of Mr. Doty's in the autumn, "ef crops hes done es well sence he went."

There had been endless talk of the villanous tendencies of Government officials, and of the tricks played whose end was to defraud honest and long-suffering claimants of their rights. There had even been dark hours when it had seemed possible that the vitiating effect of Washington life might cause deterioration in the character of even the most upright.

Could Tom himself stand it, and what would be its effect on Sheba?

But when the outlook was the most inauspicious, Fortune's wheel had swept round once and all was changed.

A letter brought the news--a simple enough letter from Tom himself. The claim was won. They were coming back to Hamlin County, he and Sheba and Rupert De Willoughby. Sheba and Rupert were to be married and spend the first weeks of their honeymoon on the side of the mountain which had enclosed the world the child Sheba had first known.

On this particular day every man and woman who had known and played with her appeared at the Cross-roads. There had not been a large number of them perhaps, but gathered together at and about the Post-office and about the house and garden, they formed a crowd, as crowds are counted in scattered communities. They embodied excitement enough to have exhilarated a much larger body of people. Half a dozen women had been helping Aunt Mornin for days. The house wore a gala air, and the cellar was stored with offerings of cake and home-made luxuries. The garden was a mass of radiant scented bloom of spring. Mis' Doty sat at the open window of the kitchen and, looking out on nodding daffodils, apple-blossom, and pink peach-flower warmed in the sun, actually chuckled as she joyfully sniffled the air.

"The way them things smells," she said, "an' the hummin' o' them bees goin' about as ef the world hadn't nothin' but flowers an' honey in it, seems like it was all jest got up for them two young uns. Lordy, I do declar', it's a plum sight."

"That bin a heap got up for 'em, seems like," said Molly Hollister, smiling at the nearest apple-tree as if it were a particular friend.

"Fust off, they're dead in love with each other, an' we uns all knows how that makes people feel--even in the dead o' winter, an' when they ain't a penny in their pockets; they're as good-hearted as they kin be--an' es hansum'--an' they're rich, an' they was married this mornin', an' they're comin' home with Tom D'Willerby to a place an' folks that loves 'em--an'

the very country an' the things that grows seems as if they was dressed out for a weddin'. An' it's Sheba as Tom took me to look at lyin' in her little old wooden cradle in the room behind the store."

She laughed, as she said it, a little hysteric laugh, with suddenly moist eyes. She was an emotional creature.

The road had been watched steadily for many hours before any arrival could have been legitimately expected. It gave restless interest--something to do. At noon one of Molly Hollister's boys came running breathlessly up the road, waving his hat.

"They're a-comin'!" he shouted. "They're a-comin'! They're in a fine carriage."

"Let Tom D'Willerby alone for havin' the finest team in Hamlin," said Mr.

Doty, with a neighbourly grin.

Almost immediately the carriage was to be seen. The horses lifted their feet high, and stepped at a pace which was felt worthy of the occasion.

Uncle Matt drove. Rupert and Sheba sat side by side. They looked very young and beautiful, and rather shy. They had only been married a few hours, and were bewildered by the new radiance of things. Big Tom humanely endeavoured not to look at them, but found it difficult to avert his eyes for any length of time. There was that about them which drew his gaze back in spite of himself.

"That's old Tom!" he heard familiar voices proclaim, as they drew near the Post-office. "Howdy, Tom! Howdy, Sheby! Wish ye much joy! Wish ye much joy!"

Then the horses stopped, and the crowd of long-known faces surged near and were all about the carriage. The clamour of the greeting voices, the grasping of one hand after another seemed to Sheba and Rupert like something happening in a dream. They were too far away from earth to feel it real just now, though it was part of the happiness of things--like the sunshine and the soft wind and the look in Tom's eyes, when, amid hand-shakes and congratulations, and welcoming laughter, he himself laughed back in his old way.

"Ye look jest like ye used ter, Tom--jest like ye used ter," cried Jake Doty. "Ye hain't changed a durned bit!"

How did the day pass? Who knows? What does it matter? It was full of strange beauty, and strange happiness, and strange life for two young souls at least. People came and went, congratulating, wondering, rejoicing. Talbot's Cross-roads felt that it had vicariously come into the possession of wealth and dignity of position. Among the many visitors, Mrs. Stamps rode up on a clay-bank mare. She was attired in the black calico riding-skirt and sunbonnet which represented the mourning garb of the mountain relict.