Hester had heard but little from William Darley as to the owner of the watch and the half-crown; but he was chagrined at the failure of all his skilful interrogations to elicit the truth, and promised her further information in a few days, with all the more vehemence because he was unaccustomed to be baffled.  And Hester had again whispered to herself ‘Patience!  Patience!’ and had slowly returned back to her home to find that Sylvia had left it, why she did not at once discover.  But, growing uneasy as the advancing hours neither brought Sylvia nor little Bella to their home, she had set out for Jeremiah Foster’s as soon as she had seen her mother comfortably asleep in her bed; and then she had learnt the whole story, bit by bit, as each person who spoke broke in upon the previous narration with some new particular.  But from no one did she clearly learn whether Sylvia was with her husband, or not; and so she came speeding along the road, breathless, to where Kester sate in wakeful, mournful silence, his sister’s sleeping head lying on his shoulder, the cottage door open, both for air and that there might be help within call if needed; and the dim slanting oblong of the interior light lying across the road.

Hester came panting up, too agitated and breathless to ask how much was truth of the fatal, hopeless tale which she had heard.  Kester looked at her without a word.  Through this solemn momentary silence the lapping of the ceaseless waves was heard, as they came up close on the shelving shore.

‘He?  Philip?’ said she.  Kester shook his head sadly.

‘And his wife—­Sylvia?’ said Hester.

‘In there with him, alone,’ whispered Kester.

Hester turned away, and wrung her hands together.

‘Oh, Lord God Almighty!’ said she, ’was I not even worthy to bring them together at last?’ And she went away slowly and heavily back to the side of her sleeping mother.  But ‘Thy will be done’ was on her quivering lips before she lay down to her rest.

The soft gray dawn lightens the darkness of a midsummer night soon after two o’clock.  Philip watched it come, knowing that it was his last sight of day,—­as we reckon days on earth.

He had been often near death as a soldier; once or twice, as when he rushed into fire to save Kinraid, his chances of life had been as one to a hundred; but yet he had had a chance.  But now there was the new feeling—­the last new feeling which we shall any of us experience in this world—­that death was not only close at hand, but inevitable.

He felt its numbness stealing up him—­stealing up him.  But the head was clear, the brain more than commonly active in producing vivid impressions.

It seemed but yesterday since he was a little boy at his mother’s knee, wishing with all the earnestness of his childish heart to be like Abraham, who was called the friend of God, or David, who was said to be the man after God’s own heart, or St John, who was called ‘the Beloved.’  As very present seemed the day on which he made resolutions of trying to be like them; it was in the spring, and some one had brought in cowslips; and the scent of those flowers was in his nostrils now, as he lay a-dying—­his life ended, his battles fought, his time for ‘being good’ over and gone—­the opportunity, once given in all eternity, past.