Under aisles of woodland shadows he sat, where the river murmured down mossy stairs of granite in a deep dingle. Above him, the varying foliage of oak and ash and silver birch was already touched with autumn, and trembled into golden points where bosses of pristine granite, crowned with the rowan's scarlet harvest, arose above their luxuriance. The mellow splendour of these forests extended to the river's brink, along which towered noble masses of giant osmunda, capped by seed spears of tawny red. Here and there gilded lances splashed into the stream or dotted its still pools with scattered sequins of sunshine, where light winnowed through the dome of the leaves; and at one spot, on a wrinkled root that wound crookedly from the alder into the river, there glimmered a halcyon, like an opal on a miser's bony finger. From above the tree-tops there sounded cynic bird-laughter, and gazing upwards Martin saw a magpie flaunt his black and white plumage across the valley; while at hand the more musical merriment of a woodpecker answered him. Then a little child's laugh came to his ear, rippling along with the note of the babbling water, and one moment later a small, sturdy boy appeared. A woman accompanied him. She had slipped a foot into the river, and thus awakened the amusement of her companion. Chris steadied herself after the mishap, balanced her basket more carefully, then stooped down to pick some of the berries that had scattered from it on the bank. When she rose a man with a brown face and soft grey eyes gleaming through gold-rimmed spectacles appeared immediately before. "Thank God I see you alive again. Thank God!" he said with intense feeling, as he took her hand and shook it warmly. "The best news that ever made my heart glad, Chris." She welcomed him, and he, looking into her eyes, saw new knowledge there, a shadow of sobriety, less of the old dance and sparkle. But he remembered the little tremulous updrawing of her lip when a smile was born, and her voice rang fuller and sweeter than any music he had ever heard since last she spoke to him. A smile of welcome she gave him, indeed, and a pressure of his hand that sent magic messages with it to the very core of him. He felt his blood leap and over his glasses came a dimness. "I was gwaine to write first moment I heard 'e was home. An' I wish I had, for I caan't tell 'e what I feel. To think of 'e searchin' the wide world for such a good-for-nought! I thank you for your generous gudeness, Martin. I'll never forget it--never. But I wasn't worth no such care." "Not worth it! It proved the greatest, bitterest grief of all my life--but one--that I couldn't find you. We grew by cruel stages to think--to think you were dead. The agony of that for us! But, thank God, it was not so. All at least is well with you now?"