The gray, wintry afternoon was drawing to a close, and the December night was shutting down upon the Honedale hills in sleety rain, when the cottage was reached, and Maddy, passing up the narrow, slippery walk, entered the cold, dreary room, where there was neither fire nor light, nor friendly voice to greet her. No sound save the ticking of the clock; no welcome save the purring of the house cat, who came crawling at her feet as she knelt before the stove and tried to kindle the fire. Charlie Green had offered to go in and do this for her, as indeed he had offered to return and stay all night, but she had declined, preferring to be alone, and with stiffened fingers she laid the kindlings Flora had prepared, and then applying the match, watched the blue flame as it gradually licked up the smoke and burst into a cheerful blaze. “I shall feel better when it’s warm,” she said, crouching over the fire, and shivering with more than bodily cold. There was a kind of nameless terror stealing over her as she sat thinking of the years ago when the inmates of three graves across the meadow were there beneath that very roof where she now sat alone. “I’ll strike a light,” she said, rising to her feet, and trying not to glance at the shadowy corners filling her with fear. The lamp was found, and its friendly beams soon dispersed the darkness from the corners and the fear from Maddy’s heart, but it could not drive from her mind thoughts of what might at that moment be transpiring at Aikenside. If the bride and groom came at all that night, she knew they must have been there for an hour or more, and in fancy she saw the tired, but happy Lucy, as in her pleasant room she made her toilet for dinner, with Guy standing by and looking on. Did he smile approvingly upon his young wife? Did his eye, when it rested on her, light up with the same expression she had seen so often when it looked at her? Did he commend her taste and say his little wife was beautiful, as he kissed her fair white cheek, or was there a cloud upon his handsome face, a shadow on his heart, heavy with thoughts of her, and would he rather it were _Maddy_ there in the bridal room? If so, his burden was hard indeed, but not so hard as hers, and kneeling on the floor, poor Maddy laid her head in the chair, and, ‘mid piteous moans, asked God, her Father, to help them both to bear—help her and Guy—making the latter love as he ought the gentle girl who had left home and friends to live with him in a far distant land; asked, too, that she might tear from her heart every sinful thought, loving Guy only as she might love the husband of another.