“Is it likely she could keep her word?” said Soule, sneeringly.

“Why, why, she loved me, John,”—­a moist color and smile coming out on his face.  “There’s a little thing I minded just now that—­Yes, Martha kept her word.”

He tapped with his fingers thoughtfully on the mantel-shelf, the smile lingering yet on his face.  The woman’s woollen sewing fell from her hand, and she spoke for the first time.  Her tone had a harsh, metallic twang in it:  Yarrow turned curiously, as he heard it.

“What could they be to you, if you found them?  They have forgotten you.  In five years they have not sent you a message.”

“No,—­I know, Madam.”

Even that did not hurt him.  His face kindled slowly,—­still turned to the fire, as if it were telling him some old story:  looking to her at last, steadfast and manly, like a man who has healthy common-sense dominant in his head, and an unselfish love at work in his heart.  Such a one is not far from the kingdom of heaven.

“It seems to me as if there might be a chance—­yet.  It’s a long time.  But Martha loved me, Madam.  You don’t know—­I think I’ll go, John.  It’s close here, ’s I said.  I’ll meet you at the far bridge by dawn, and let you know.”

“It is your only chance,” said Soule, roughly, as he followed him to the door.

He was a ruined man, if he were balked in this.

“You do not know how the world meets a returned felon, Stephen; you”—­

“Let me go,” feebly, putting his hand up to his chin in the old fashion.

“I think I know that.  I—­I’ve thought of that a good deal.  But it seemed to me as if there might be a chance”; and so, without a word of farewell, went stumbling down the stairs.

He had given a wistful look at the fire, as he turned away.  Perhaps that would comfort him.  God surely has “many voices in the world, and none of them is without its signification.”

An hour before dawn, Yarrow found the place in which he had appointed to meet his brother.  The night had been dark, hailing at intervals; he had gone tramping up and down the hills and stubble-fields, through snow and half-frozen mud-gullies, hardly conscious of what he did.  The night seemed long to him now, looking back.  He found a burnt sycamore-stump and got up on it, shivered awhile, felt his shirt, which was wet to the skin, then took off his shoes and cleared the lumps of slush out of them.  There was something horrible to him in this unbroken silence and dark and wet cold:  he had been in his hot cell so long, the frost stung him differently from other men, the icy thaw was wetter.  It was a narrow cut in the hills where he was, a bridle-road leading back and running zigzag for some miles until it returned to the railroad-track.  A lonely, unfrequented place:  Frazier would take this by-path; Soule had chosen it well to meet him.  There was a rickety bridge crossing a hill-stream a few rods beyond.  Yarrow pushed