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It was as though his heart yearned for that love which he thought he had forfeited the right to claim. In a few words Rotha explained the turn of events. Sim's agitation overpowered him. He walked to and fro in short, fitful steps, crying that there was no help, no help. "I thought I saw three men leading three horses up High Seat from behind the smithy.

The last words were spoken with his head dropped on to his breast. Rotha stepped in front of him, and, putting her hand on his shoulder, stopped him and looked searchingly in his face. "What is this sadness, Ralph? Is there something you have not told me something behind, which, when it comes, will take the joy out of this glad news you give me?"

"Could you not wait four hours longer?" said Rotha. "I could if you wish it; but why?" "I don't know that is, I can't say but wait until four o'clock, I beg of you." The girl spoke with deep earnestness. "I shall wait," said Willy, after a pause. "And you'll meet me at the bridge by the smithy?" said Rotha. Willy nodded assent. "At four precisely," he said. "This is all I came to ask.

Willy sank back into his seat with a feeling akin to awe. "Let it be so, Rotha," he said a moment later; "but Ralph is doomed. Your love is barren; it comes too late. Remember what you once said, that death comes to all." "But there is something higher than death and stronger," cried Rotha, "or heaven itself is a lie and God a mockery. No, they shall not die, for they are innocent."

But the girl was ignorant of her own secret even yet. "We'll say no more about it now, Rotha," repeated Willy in a broken voice. "If you wish it, we'll talk again; give me a sign, and perhaps we'll talk on this matter again." In another moment the young man was gone. She put her hand over her eyes the hand that still tingled with the light pressure of his touch. What had happened?

To go round by the tailor's desolate cottage did not sensibly impede their progress. Rotha had paid hurried visits daily to her forlorn little home since the terrible night of the death of the master of Shoulthwaite. She had done what she could to make the cheerless house less cheerless.

The trees no longer sighed and moaned with the wind; on the stiffening firs lay beads of frozen snow, and the wind as it passed through them soughed. The ghylls were fuller and louder, and seemed to come from every hill; the gullocks overflowed, but silence was stealing over the streams, and the deeper rivers seemed scarcely to flow. Ralph and Rotha walked side by side to Shoulthwaite Moss.

Well, Rotha had hardly gone out when a tap came to the door, and what do you think it was? A woman, a woman thin and blear-eyed. Some one must have counted her face bonnie once. She was scarce older than my own lass, but she'd a poor weak barn at her breast and a wee lad that trudged at her side.

Last night, again, I was awakened by Sim crying in his sleep the strange, shrill, tearless night-cry that freezes the blood of the listener. Then I lay an hour awake. Again I thought that one opened the door. I looked to see Rotha. It was she. I believe she was sent to us in the spirit as a messenger of peace and hope hope of that better world which we are soon to reach." The gaoler knocked.

Not that I care," she added, as if by an afterthought, and as though to conceal the extent to which she felt compromised; "it's nothing to me, that I can see. Only Wythburn's a hard-spoken place, and they're sure to make a scandal of it." "It's a pity about Robbie," said Rotha sympathetically. Liza could scarcely control her tears.