“Very well,” he said hoarsely.  “This is the good-by kiss.  This is good-by.”  And once again he felt the swift lambent ecstasy of a love that he had never till now guessed at; a joy beyond words, beyond dreams, beyond belief.  “Now, you must go;” and he slowly released himself, and held her at arm’s length.  “That was our good-by.  Good-by, my Norah—­my darling—­good-by.”  Then he went to the table in front of the window, and sat down.

She came a little way from the door, and spoke to him before going out and along the passage.

“I shan’t mind now—­however miserable I am—­because I know it’s all right.  An’ I promise to be good, an’ do all I’m told, an’ always be your own Norah.”

Then she left him—­the gray-haired respected Mr. Dale of Vine-Pits Farm, sitting in his office window for all the world to see; looking livid, shaky, old; and feeling like a Christian missionary in some far-off heathen land, who, having preached to the gang of pirates into whose hands he had fallen, lies now at the roadside with all his inside torn away, and waits for birds with beaks or beasts with claws to come and finish him.

Before the horse was put into the wagonette and the trunk brought down-stairs, Dale had left the house and gone some distance along the road in the direction of the Barradine Arms.  Even if Norah had not said that he need not be there at the moment of departure, he would have been unable to remain.  He could not stand by and see her piteous face, her slender figure, her forlorn gestures, while they carried her off—­the poor little weak thing sent away from hearth and home, cast out among strangers because any spot on the earth, however bare or hard, had become a better shelter for her than the place that should have been sacredly secure.

He walked heavily, with a leaden heart and leaden feet; his eyes downcast, not glancing at the dark trees on one side or the bright fields on, the other.  But after passing the first of the woodland paths and before coming to the second, he looked up.  He had heard the sound of many footsteps and the murmur of many voices.  All those blue-cloaked orphans, two and two, an endless procession, were advancing toward him.

Never had the sight and the sound of them been so horribly distasteful to him.  They were still a long way off, and he thought he could dodge them, at any rate avoid meeting them face to face, if he hurried on to the second footpath and dived into the wood there.  But then it seemed as if he had stupidly miscalculated the distance, or that his legs were failing him, or that the girls came sweeping down the road at an impossibly rapid pace; so that they were right upon him just as he reached the stile.  He drew aside, and, feeling that it was too late now to turn his back, watched them as they passed.