The sun, when it set, shed just as warm a glow over his heart as it did over the marsh-land, though he did not put two and two together about it. From the village on the hill, the flaming sky that reddened behind the solemn buttresses of the ancient church, sent soft and palpitating reflections over the quiet land that lay stretched below; and the tender radiance reached to his patient spirit also. For he too had waited through the hot hours for this blessed eventide that lay so calm and peaceful a touch upon the seething earth, and the red in the west was the signal for his rest and for his reward. He hastened towards the one thing in the world that he loved—glad, eager, and a little anxious as he always was when his little maid was, even a stone’s throw, away from him. And as he drew near to the river-bank where he had been told that she was playing, his vague uneasiness began to take a sort of shape. For there was a little knot of children gathered there—and they were not noisily fighting or playing—but standing huddled together gazing into the water, and two of them, who were girls, were crying, and one, who was a boy, was stripping off his little jacket. Wycombe dashed forward—throwing his harvesting tools on the ground as he ran, and pulling off his coat. The children parted as they saw him, speechless with terror; their silence told him the truth, but he needed no telling—he had known it was his Daisy who was in the water. “Where?” was all he said, breathless. “There, under the bridge,” cried a lad, pointing. It was an awkward spot; he plunged and dived once, without success. But the second time the little petticoats bubbled up before his eyes: he seized them and scrambled up the bank with her, a little, inert mass under his arm. Mrs. Goodenough and the girl who was a stranger, had come running up, and other neighbours followed. “’Ot blankets and ’ot water to ’er feet,” said one; “and a drop o’ spirit in ’er inside be the thing,” suggested another; and a third, more practical, ran up the steep bank towards the village, saying she would fetch the doctor and get things ready in the cottage agin’ Mr. Wycombe carried her up. He had thrown himself upon the little body, breathing into it with all his might, though with little knowledge of how to effect restoration. But luckily the little one had been in the water but a moment, and she was strong and lusty. In a few minutes she began to stir, then to open her eyes, and then to cry, and at that the man seized her in his arms and pressed her to his warm heart, and, waving the curious and sympathizing little crowd aside, leapt to his feet and strode up the hill with her on his neck. It was late. The afterglow had died away, leaving no more than a warm memory in the softer blue of the night sky, and a subtle sense of colour that had been, in the fast darkening marsh-land where faint vapours and floating mists were rising upon the dykes.