Then, as he spoke his wife's name, and she remembered her sacred charge, the faithful creature suddenly fell on his neck in piteous weeping. "Oh, the bonnie face," she wept, "that has grown so old, with the sorrow and the gray hair! My dear, this will just kill her with joy, after all her years of bitter widowhood." And then she cried again, and stroked his face as though he were a child, and then wrung her hands for pity at the changes she saw. "It is the same face, and yet not the same," she said, by and by. "I knew the look of your eyes, my bonnie man, for all they were so piercing with sadness. But what have they done to you, Herbert?--for it might be your own ghost,--so thin; and yet you are brown, too; and your hair!" And she touched the gray locks over the temples with tender fluttering fingers. "Magdalene never liked gray hairs," he responded, with a sigh. "She is as beautiful as ever, I hear; but I have not caught a glimpse of her. Tell me, Barby,--for I have grown timorous with sorrow,--will she hate the sight of such a miserable scarecrow?" "My dear! hate the sight of her own husband, who is given back to her from the dead? Ay, I have much to hear. Why did you never write to us, Herbert? But there! you have all that to explain to her by and by." "Yes; and you must tell me about the children,--my little Janie," he returned, in a choked voice. "Ah, the dear angels! But, Herbert, you must be careful. Nobody speaks of them to Magdalene, unless she does herself. You are impetuous, my dear; and Magdalene--well, she has not been herself since you left her. It is pining, grief, and the dead weight of loss that has ailed her being childless and widowed at once. There, there! just so. We must be tender of her, poor dear! and things will soon come right." "You need not fear me, Barby. I have learned my lesson at last. If I only get my wife back, you shall see--you shall see how I will make up to her for all I have ever made her suffer! My poor girl! my poor girl!" And then he shaded his face, and was silent. Phillis had stolen out in the garden, and sat down on a little bench outside, where passers-by could not discern her from the road, and where only the sound of their voices reached her faintly. Now and then, chance words fell on her ear,--"Magdalene" over and over again; and "Janie" and "Bertie,"--always in the voice she had so admired. By and by she heard her own name, and rose at once, and found them looking for her. "Here is my good angel, Barby," observed Mr. Cheyne, as she came up smiling. "Not one girl in a thousand would have acted as bravely and simply as she has done. We are friends for life, Miss Challoner, are we not?" And he stretched out his hand to her, and Phillis laid her own in it.