There had been days and nights in London when the lamp of life had burned exceeding low, when he had never thought to lie in his own dear woods again, to see the squirrel swinging and chiding against the sky, to hear the cry of the water-hen to its mate from the reeded pools below. He had loved these things always, but to see them again after toiling up from the gates of death is to find them transfigured. "The light that never was on sea or land" gleams for a moment on wood and wold for eyes that have looked but now into the darkness of the grave. Almost it seems in such hours as if God had passed by that way, as if the forest had knowledge of Him, as if the awed pines kept Him ever in remembrance. Almost. Almost. * * * * * Di was never absent from John's thoughts for long together. His dawning love for her had as yet no pain in it. It wandered still in glades of hyacinth and asphodel. Truly-- "Love is bonny, a little while, while it is new." Its feet had not yet reached the stony desert places and the lands of fierce heat and fiercer frost, through which all human love which does not die in infancy must one day travel. The strain and stress were not yet. * * * * * John was coming back one evening from a longer expedition than usual. The violet dusk had gathered over the gardens. The massive flank and towers of the castle were hardly visible against the sky. As he came near he saw a light in the arched windows of the chapel, and through the open lattice came the sound of the organ. Some one was playing within, and the night listened from without; John stood and listened too. The organ, so long dumb, was speaking in an audible voice--was telling of many things that had lain long in its heart, and that now at last trembled into speech. Some unknown touch was bringing all its pure passionate soul to its lips. Its voice rose and fell, and the listening night sighed in the ivy. John went noiselessly indoors by the postern, and up the short spiral staircase in the thickness of the wall, into the chapel, an arched Elizabethan chamber leading out of the dining-hall. He stopped short in the doorway.