The last bell was dinning it into his ears: “All gone—all gone!” But there was silence at last. The folks were all safe in church, and he was alone in the quiet evening. Alone, but not at peace; though the land that lay stretched below him, miles upon miles of serene pastures, studded with browsing cattle and brown with tender shades, might well have brought him some measure of serenity. Mechanically he thought of the words that the parson would speak when the service was ended: “And the peace of God which passeth all understanding.” Was it because no one could understand, that it was never to be found? It was no use going to church to find it—for he had tried that ... “parson” he could not grasp, and the sight of the neighbours and the knowledge that they guessed his grief, put peace further from him than ever. Where was it to be found? He did not know ... but something within him knew, and whispered to him that it was to be found doing the right; yes, and again—that it was to be found in the heart of his little maid. She had known it; she had breathed it forth from her sunny innocence; she had brought it to him often and often. Would she not bring it again? Was she changed because others had sinned? A sound of distant singing came to him across the hollyhocks and the sunflowers: it was the evening hymn. It was kinder than the bells—it brought him nearer to peace: _she_ had been so fond of it, so proud to raise her baby voice with the rest. Was she singing it to-night? Was she happy? He lost himself in his dream of her; not that she was not always in his thoughts, in work or in leisure, but that when he was at leisure he could live only in his dreams. Bitterness—or at least active anger and resentment—had long ago died out of him; all _that_ was dead as the dead woman whom he had once loved—buried in her grave. It was always of his little maid that he dreamed. The sun had set; the west was still glorious behind the cottages, and even the grey downiness of the lightly-veiled sky overhead was warm with the memory of the borrowed flush, but the twilight was gathering, dusky and tender: the great plain took a sorrowful farewell of the day, lingering over it softly: the red harvest moon crept slowly between the sea and the sky. Vaguely he remembered that it was on just such a night, ten years and more ago, that he had wooed his wife down yonder by the distant harbour. Yet it was less of her that he thought than of his maid—of his dear little maid. He dreamed of her as he saw her that last time framed in the doorway, with the first of the sunlight upon her and the dew of the morning and the springtime. And even as he dreamed—there she was! There was a little rustle in the cabbages below the garden wall—and there she stood with her golden head just in front of the red moon.