“He looked simple amazement, as he would have done, had it been a rock or flower; he did not offer to take it,—­still I held it out.

“‘Will you examine the contents,’ I asked, ’and report to me the result?’

“‘Certainly I will, Miss Axtell,’ he said; and with it he walked to the office.

“I watched him through the window.  I saw him coolly apply various tests.  The third one seemed satisfactory.

“He came to the door.  I was very near, and went in

“‘This is nothing Miss Mary had,—­it is poison,’ he said.

“He was innocent; I knew it in the very depth of my soul.  How could I tell him the deed his hand had done?  But I must, and I did.  I told him how Chloe had brought the cup to me.  When I had done, he said,—­

“‘You believe this of me?’

“I answered,—­

“‘The cup is now in your hand; judge you of its work’; and I told him how I had seen him come out the night before,—­that I was in the shrubbery when he went to the office.

“The words of his answer came; they were iron in my heart, though spoken not to me.

“‘O my God, why hast Thou let me do this?’ he cried, and went past me out of the little white office,—­out, as I had done, into the open air, in my sorrow, the night before.

“I would not lose sight of him; I followed on; and, as I went, I thought I heard a rustling in the leaves.  A momentary horror swept past me, lest some one had been watching,—­listening, perhaps,—­but I did not pause.  I must know how, where, Bernard would hide his misery.  It was not quite dark; I could not run through the night, as I had done before; I must follow on at a respectable pace, stop to greet the village-people who were come out in the cool of the evening, and all the while keep in view that figure, hastening, for what I knew not, but on to the sands, whilst those whom I met stayed me to ask how Mary Percival died.  I passed the last of the village-houses.  There was nothing before me now but Nature and this unhappy soul.  I lost sight of him; I came to the sands; I saw only long, low flats stretching far out,—­beyond them the line of foam.  The moon was not yet gone; but its crescent momently lessened its light.  I went up and down the shore two or three times, going on a little farther each time, meeting nothing,—­nothing but the fear that stood on the sands before me, whichever way I turned.  It bent down from the sky to tell me of its presence; it came surging up behind me; and one awful word was on its face and in its voice.  I remember shutting my eyes to keep it out; I remember putting my fingers into my ears to still its voice.  I was so helpless, so alone to do, so threadless of action, that—­I prayed.

“People pray in this world from so many causes,—­it matters not what or how; the hour for prayer comes into every life at some time of its earthly course, whether softly falling and refreshing as the early rain, or by the north-wind’s icy path.  Mine came then, on the sands; my spirit went out of my mortality unto God for help,—­solely because that which I wanted was not in me, not in all the earth.