"Yes, I think it must go on till our new beginning," returned Mark quietly. "Then we shall find--and what's better, the Great Maker will find--that no touch of His hand has been in vain, that every blow with the mallet was needed, every scrape with the sharp tool," he added, in a pitying voice, for he had detected that Hester's questioning cry had been wrung from an aching heart. "Thank you, Mark," she murmured, after a moment's silence. "I shan't forget your parable next time the mallet or the piercing tool tries to improve me, and shall recall this grey stone--so finished, so perfect. Surely loving hands fashioned it, as you say, or it would not have withstood the ravages of centuries to tell its tale to us on this bright morning." As the two friends wandered on among the grey relics, "praising the chapel sweet with its little porch and its rustic door," Mark was reminded of a description in a well-read page of his favourite poet. In some of its aspects, it so truly described this morning which he was spending with Hester, that he resolved to bring the brown volume in his pocket the next time they rode together and read to her the lovely description of the old chapel and all that followed. Yes, that "screen" though slight was "sure"! He would try to prove loyal in all things to this girl, who was evidently finding life very different from the flower-strewn path she had looked forward to when that bright letter reached him in the German Gasthaus, telling him of her engagement. He was glad to think it was still given him to cherish her as a friend. "Friends--lovers that might have been," he murmured. Then, in spite of himself, as they walked silently down the steps together, more of the poet's words vibrated in his heart---- "Oh the little more and how much it is, And the little less, and what worlds away And life be the proof of this."