“Ah, I” (he held up the cane with which he still eased the weight on one foot), “I cannot walk so far, but perhaps I will come and meet you on your return,” and he pleased himself with the idea that she cared that he should come.

He went into his house again.  His heart, which had lately been learning the habit of peace, just now learned a new lesson of what joy might be.  His future before him looked troublous, but the worst of his fears was allayed.  He had loved Sophia long; to-day his love seemed multiplied a thousandfold.  Hope crept to his heart like a darling child that had been in disgrace and now was forgiven.

The others went on down the road.

Alec told his news about Eliza as drily as facts could be told.  If he touched his story at all with feeling, it was something akin to a sneer.

“She’ll get him on to the track of prosperity now she’s taken hold, Miss Rexford,” said he.  “Mr. and Mrs. Bates will be having a piano before long, and they will drive in a ‘buggy.’  That’s the romance of a settler’s life in Canada.”

When they had left that subject Sophia said, “Now he is gone, are you going away?”

“Yes; in a day or two.  I’ve fixed nothing yet, because Robert seems to have some unaccountable objection to getting rid of me just at present; but I shall go.”

“It is very fine weather,” she said.

“There is too much glare,” said he.

“You are surely hard to please.”

“What I call fine weather is something a man has something in common with.  If one were a little chap again, just leaving school for a holiday, this would be a glorious day, but—­what man has spirits equal to” (he looked above) “this sort of thing.”

His words came home to Sophia with overwhelming force, for, as they went on, touching many subjects one after another, she knew with absolute certainty that her companion had not the slightest intention of being her suitor.  If the sunny land through which she was walking had been a waste place, in which storm winds sighed, over which storm clouds muttered, it would have been a fitter home for her heart just then.  She saw that she was to be called to no sacrifice, but she experienced no buoyant relief.  He was going away; and she was to be left.  She had not known herself when she thought she wanted him to go—­she was miserable.  Well, she deserved her misery, for would she not be more miserable if she married him?  Had she not cried and complained?  And now the door of this renunciation was not opened to her—­he was going away, and she was to be left.

Very dull and prosaic was the talk of these two as they walked up the road to that pine grove where the river curved in, and they turned back through that strip of wilderness between road and river where it was easy to be seen that the brightest leaf posies were to be had.

Nearest the pines was a group of young, stalwart maple trees, each of a different dye—­gold, bronze, or red.  It was here that they lingered, and Alec gathered boughs for the children till their hands were full.  The noise of the golden-winged woodpecker was in the air, and the call of the indigo bird.