For the first time in five years I laughed aloud. This was something worth. Here was an atom, not yet five, who took her pen in hand and misspelled her firm intention to do as she chose. I folded the paper and laid it aside, wondering what kind of offspring I had begotten, and the following morning took horse to Landgore to see this very determined little body for myself. As I came in sight of the place after my long ride, strange voices called to me from the sea, from the heather, from the great copper birch over the house. Eyes long dead seemed looking into mine, hands were on my hair, and there came to me, with the feeling of mortal sickness, the terrible, sweet remembrances of an early passion and of things to be known to none save Marian and me and the One who does most wisely for the Great End, but bitterly to us who see but a little of the way. Reaching the porch, my strength left me utterly, and I leaned against one of the wooden pillars for support. Standing thus, I saw a child running down the braeside at the top of her speed, with no knowledge of my presence, but coming at her fastest to reach the house. She wore a short-waisted black frock, with a very long skirt, which almost touched the ground. On her feet were red shoes, which twinkled in and out of the black, as with great dexterity and lightness, she clambered up the steps of the porch and stood before me, one of the miracles of God before which we human folk stand abashed. For here was Marian again. Marian to the turn of an eyelash; to the finger tips; in the bronze chestnut curls which stood like a halo round the face; in the supple little woman-body; in all the dear, quaint, beautiful baby who stood before me devouring me with gray eyes, and looking at me with a radiant, shy smile as she held a kitten tail up against her breast. After a few seconds' regard of me, during which I could see by her face that she was piecing some bits of knowledge together, she clapped her hands. "Jock!" she cried, with a rapturous smile. I can never tell the joy and horror of the moment, for my name was the first word my beloved had ever spoken to me, and at the sound of it from this, her child, my heart leaped into my throat; there came a whirring in the top of my head and a singing in my ears, and as I sank upon the old stone settle something like a moan escaped me. In the next minute I knew Nancy Stair for all time. The sight of suffering seemed to put her past herself, and, dashing toward me, she climbed up on the seat. I could feel the warmth of her body and the clinging of her dimpled arm as she drew my head against her naked, palpitating little breast as though to defend me from suffering against the whole world. "Oh, you poor fing!" she cried. "You poor fing! Does you hurt?"