Mat gave his hand, but he put it out like a man groping in the dark. His mind was full of that memorable letter about a Hair Bracelet, which he had found in the box given to him by Joanna Grice. “A Hair Bracelet?” he said, vacantly. “Don’t be sulky!” cried Zack, clapping him on the shoulder. “A Hair Bracelet is unlucky to the young woman--and she’s got one already” (he was weighing attentively the lightest word that Zack had spoken to him). “What’s it like?” he asked aloud, turning suddenly to young Thorpe. “What’s what like?” “A Hair Bracelet.” “Still harping on that, after all my explanations! Like? Why it’s hair plaited up, and made to fasten round the wrist, with gold at each end to clasp it by. What are you stopping for again? I’ll tell you what, Mat, I can make every allowance for a man in your love-struck situation; but if I didn’t know how you had been spending the morning, I should say you were drunk.” They had been walking along quickly, while Mat asked what a Hair Bracelet was like. But no sooner had Zack told him than he came to a dead pause--started and changed color--opened his lips to speak--then checked himself, and remained silent. The information which he had just received had recalled to him a certain object that he had seen in the drawer of Mr. Blyth’s bureau; and the resemblance between the two had at once flashed upon him. The importance which this discovery assumed in his eyes, in connection with what he had already heard, may be easily estimated, when it is remembered that his barbarian life had kept him totally ignorant that a Hair Bracelet is in England one of the commonest ornaments of woman’s wear. “Are we going to stop here all day?” asked Zack. “If you’re turning from sulky to sentimental again, I shall go back to Blyth’s, and pave the way for you with Madonna, old boy!” He turned gaily in the direction of Valentine’s house, as he said those words. Mat did not offer to detain him; did not say a word at parting. He passed his hand wearily over his eyes as Zack left him. “I’m sober,” he said vacantly to himself; “I’m not dreaming; I’m not light-headed, though I feel a’most like it. I saw that young woman as plain as I see them houses in front of me now; and by God, if she had been Mary’s ghost, she couldn’t have been more like her!” He stopped. His hand fell to his side; then fastened mechanically on the railings of a house near him. His rough, misshapen fingers trembled round the iron. Recollections that had slumbered for years and years past, were awakening again awfully to life within him. Through the obscurity and oblivion of long absence, through the changeless darkness of the tomb, there was shining out now, vivid and solemn on his memory, the image--as she had been in her youth-time--of the dead woman whose name was “Mary.” And it was only the sight of that young girl, of that poor, shy, gentle, deaf and dumb creature, that had wrought the miracle!