“There, do you hear it?” Mrs. Winnie stopped her stitching and listened. This time she did hear something beyond the clapping of a bough against the wall. “Why, yes, little lady.” “Listen, there is the farm gate.” She turned quickly toward the door, opened it, and stood looking out into the dusk. Mrs. Winnie put her work aside, gave a glance through the window, smiled to herself, and then discovered that she had business in the dairy. In the dusk she had seen a man dismounting from a horse, and her husband plodding across the yard to welcome the traveller and take his nag to the stable. Mrs. Winnie was a woman of tact. She caught son William sneaking in by the back door, and took him with her to inspect the milk-pans. Barbara stood framed in the doorway with a warm light playing about her, and the brown wainscoting, the great beams in the ceiling, and the red bricks for a background. Yet the impulse of the moment failed in her, and a shy panic took its place, so that she went and stood before the fire and turned her head away so as not to see his coming. For there was something in the intense truth that almost made her afraid, and she might have fled away to her room but for the thought that he had seen her at the door and might not understand the whim of a woman. She heard his footsteps on the path, and when she looked he was on the threshold, wet and travel-stained, but with eyes that were very bright. He came and took her hands, but stood a little apart because of his wet clothes, and also because there was a sense of awe between them. His eyes searched her face to see whether there were any shadow of pain or sadness thereon. And now that he was so near to her, her shyness and her confusion fled, and simple love alone had utterance. “John, how wet you are! Come to the fire, and let me dry your coat. I had a feeling that you would come to-night.” She led him to the fire; yet though the initiative was hers, she went with his arm about her waist. “You are looking wondrous well, Barbe!” “Am I?” And she colored, and hid her eyes from him a moment. “I am glad, very glad, to have you back, John. I was afraid, with this rough weather, and the roads so bad, and you riding alone.” “And yet I was not alone,” he said, touching her hair reverently. “I shall never be alone again, pray God.” “Yes, dear, I understand.” And she put her face up for him to kiss her, her eyelids closed and the lashes shading her cheeks. Then she made him sit down in the chair before the fire, and, fetching the rough towel that hung on one of the doors, she rubbed his coat while he sat patiently and tried not to look amused. For there was something infinitely quaint and sweet in this ministration to a man who had seen the wild world in its cups and in its quarrels. He caught the two hands and kissed them, and looked up into eyes that were full of a mysterious tremor of light. “Do you know, child, what you bring into my mind?” “No, John.”