The melancholy of the deserted home oppressed me, as though I had wronged it; the sad little house seemed to be watching me out of its humble windows, like a patient dog awaiting another blow.  Beacraft’s worn coat and threadbare vest, limp and musty as the garments of a dead man, hung on a peg behind the door.  I searched the pockets with repugnance and found a few papers, which smelled like the covers of ancient books, memoranda of miserable little transactions—­threepence paid for soling shoes, twopence here, a penny there; nothing more.  I threw the papers on the grass, dipped up a bucket of well-water, and rinsed my fingers.  And always the tenantless house watched me furtively from its humble windows.

The sun’s brassy edge glittered above the blue chain of hills as I walked across the pasture towards the path that led winding among the alders to the brook below.  I followed it in the deepening evening light and sat down on a log, watching the water swirling through the flat stepping-stones where trout were swarming, leaping for the tiny winged creatures that drifted across the dusky water.  And as I sat there I became aware of sounds like voices; and at first, seeing no one, I thought the noises came from the low bubbling monotone of the stream.  Then I heard a voice murmuring:  “I will do what you ask me—­I will do everything you desire.”

Fearful of eavesdropping, I rose, peering ahead to make myself known, but saw nothing in the deepening dusk.  On the point of calling, the words died on my lips as the same voice sounded again, close to me: 

“I pray you let me have my way.  I will obey you.  How can you doubt it?  But I must obey in my own way.”

And Sir George’s deep, pleasant voice answered:  “There is danger to you in this.  I could not endure that, Magdalen.”

They were on a path parallel to the trail in which I stood, separated from me by a deep fringe of willow.  I could not see them, though now they were slowly passing abreast of me.

“What do you care for a maid you so easily persuade?” she asked, with a little laugh that rang pitifully false in the dusk.

“It is her own merciful heart that persuades her,” he said, under his breath.

“I think my heart is merciful,” she said—­“more merciful than even I knew.  The restless blood in me set me afire when I saw the wrong done to these patient people of the Long House....  And when they appealed to me I came here to justify them, and bid them stand for their own hearths....  And now you come, teaching me the truth concerning right and wrong, and how God views justice and injustice; and how this tempest, once loosened, can never be chained until innocent and guilty are alike ingulfed....  I am very young to know all these things without counsel....  I needed aid—­and wisdom to teach me—­your wisdom.  Now, in my turn, I shall teach; but you must let me teach in my way.  There is only one way that the Long House can be taught....  You do not believe it, but in this I am wiser than you—­I know.”