She was within only a few feet of the platform and had asked the man facing her when it would be finished, when she noticed his companion who did not raise his head. Meg hastily made up her mind that though the likeness was remarkable it could not possibly be Jem, or he would have turned round at the sound of her voice. Nevertheless she was glad to escape into the house again, as the likeness took away her breath and gave her a strange sensation of fear. As Meg turned away the man whom she had noticed looked round and watched her. His bright blue eyes in a moment took in every item of her dress, and the fact that the sun was shining on her lovely hair turning its auburn to gold. Had it not been for her hair and indeed for her atmosphere, which was unmistakable to the man who loved her as his own soul, he would scarcely have recognised her, for her voice had changed and her way of speaking, not to mention the extraordinary difference that clothes make. Meg was in a white cotton frock, so white and clean it looked to Jem, that it had almost the same effect upon him that the sight of angels wings might have had. He straightened himself when he discovered that her head was turned away, and gazed wonderingly after her. "Thank God," he cried in his heart, but the man by his side only saw the wonder displayed on his fellow worker's face. "She's a beauty, ain't she?" he said following Jem's example and watching Meg's hasty retreat to the house. "They do say as how Miss Dennison picked her out of the gutter; but that's all moonshine. She's a queen if ever there was one." But Jem did not hear his companion's words. He was transfixed. At last he had his reward. Ever since his little brother Steve had died he had been searching for Meg, getting odd jobs in this town and that while he made enquiries. He had been in Elminster for a fortnight, and some gossip he had overheard about the singer at the concert to be held at Friars Court raised his hopes, and finding that the carpenter for whom he was doing odd jobs was engaged to put a platform in the garden, he had been rejoiced at being told that he was wanted to help one of the workmen at Friars Court. As he bent over his work his ears were straining all the time to hear a footfall that he might recognise, and as after two or three hours he heard a girl's voice and then the sound of footsteps on the gravel path, his heart beat to suffocation. He could not mistake that footstep, though when the question as to the time of finishing the platform had been put to his fellow workman, he would not have recognised the voice. On hearing the retreating footsteps he had raised himself, and seeing Meg and learning from her whole appearance that she was apparently well, happy, and evidently cared for, he thanked God.