Poor Hugh! How he winced and trembled, and wished he was away. How madly the hot blood poured through his swollen veins, and how fast the pain increased about his temples, while little sparks of fire danced before his eyes. Alice should have her wish, he said bitterly. She should not find Spring Bank encumbered with its hateful owner. ’Lina should not find him there when she returned, she should never blush again for him, for he would go away. With a stifled, noiseless moan, Hugh rose to leave the room, glancing once toward the narrow opening in the folding-doors. Then, as if petrified with what he saw, he stood riveted to the spot, his quivering lips apart, his head bent forward, and his eyes almost black, so strangely bright they grew. Alice’s long, bright hair, was arranged at last, and the soft curls fell about her face, giving to it the same look it had worn in childhood—the look which was graven on Hugh’s heart, as with a pencil of fire; the look he never had forgotten through all the years which had come and gone since first it shone on him; the look he had never hoped to see again, so sure was he that it had been quenched by the waters of Lake Erie. Alice’s face was turned fully toward him. Through the open window at her back the August sunlight streamed, falling on her chestnut hair, and tinging it with the yellow gleam which Hugh remembered so well. For an instant the long lashes shaded the fair round cheek, and then were uplifted, disclosing the eyes of blue, which, seen but once, could never be mistaken, and Hugh was not mistaken. One look of piercing scrutiny at the face unconsciously confronting him, one mighty throb, which seemed to bear away his very life, and then Hugh knew the grave had given up its dead. She was not lost for she stood there before him. She whose memory had saved him oftentimes from sin. She, for whom he would almost lay him down and die. _She, the Golden Haired._ Changed, it is true, from a lovely child of thirteen to a far more lovely woman, but not past his recognition. The golden locks his hands had touched but once, and that when the mad waves were dashing over them, had put on a richer, darker tinge, and fell in heavier masses about her brow and neck. The face, too, with its piquant nose, was more mature; only the eyes were wholly unchanged. In them, the same truthful loving light was shining, and the curve of the silken lashes was just the same as when they drooped coyly, beneath the compliment which the tall youth had paid them. Golden Hair had come back, but, alas, prejudiced against him. She hoped he might be gone. She would be happier if he never crossed her path. “And I never, never will,” Hugh thought, as he staggered from the room and sought a small outer court, whose locality he knew, and where he could be alone to think.