Bertie could not have put the sensation into words, but what was happening to him was simply this. The faint recollections of a forgotten past that had wearied and confused his brain during the first days of his return to consciousness were fading away in the stronger light of an actual, tangible present, and, save in certain places and under certain conditions, the painful sense of bewildered perplexity was gradually giving way to a more healthy frame of mind. The park, with its voiceless language of coming spring, awoke no associations within the child’s breast. He walked on quietly, enjoying it all very much, but haunted by no illusive visions that refused to be defined; troubled by nothing worse than a sort of anxiety lest Queenie, the pretty little girl whose name Mrs. Pritchard had told him, should not be able to keep the appointment she had made for the following afternoon. But he had soon left the park behind, and came out upon the low sandhills that stretched away for at least a quarter of a mile towards the margin of the sea. The sun shone very bright and warm here; the soft sand crumbled beneath his feet; and the sea-gulls walked tamely about, and looked at him with a sort of impudent assurance before they took wing. Bertie was fond of this spot; he could not have said why, for something in its level desolation always made him a little sad; yet the sight of the boundless waste of heaving water and the arid stretches of pale sand had an odd fascination for him, and he would have felt sorrowful had a day passed without his visiting at least once the scene that exercised a powerful sway over his imagination. As he wandered down towards the margin of the sea, a little black figure jumped up from a recumbent position upon the sand, and David and Bertie stood face to face. They looked very different indeed now, the two children who had once been almost like little brothers for a few brief days of their life: David, with his pale blue eyes, straw-colored hair, indeterminate face, and coarse clothing, and Bertie, dark-eyed, dark-haired, clad in velvet, and with that nameless air about him that bespoke birth and breeding as no costliness of apparel could do. The boy’s face was aglow with intelligence and eager welcome, and its expression was so utterly different, in its refinement and sweetness, from the awkward, clumsy pleasure painted upon that of the fisherman’s boy, that it was no great wonder, perhaps, if David himself had some dim perception of it. He stopped short and gazed at Bertie for a full minute in silence, and then said, heaving a great sigh,— “Eh, but thee is so beautiful! I do love thee!” Bertie smiled and took both of David’s hands in his. “I love you too,” he answered. “What are you doing, David?” “I be learning my Sunday lesson. I goes to school mornings before church; but I don’t go afternoons. I come out here and learns my lesson. Does anybody give thee Sunday lessons to learn?”