“Up on the hill, the church bell tolled thrice. “Suddenly an intense drowsiness overcame me—I, who for a month past had scarcely slept. I crept back to bed and fell asleep as my head touched the pillow. “I slept until ten o’clock the next morning, then woke with such a sense of comfort and joy, that I could not understand what had happened. “Then I remembered my call to you at midnight. And then I knew—knew with an unhesitating certainty—that my belovèd had kept his word; that some time between midnight and ten o’clock, on this 12th of September, 1883, he had come back, for my sake, and was now on earth once more, spending his first day as a little living, growing, beautiful man-child. “Oh, the wonder of those hours! My breasts thrilled and ached with joy and longing. Ah, if I could but press his baby lips against them! The wife in me was merged in the wish that I could be his mother! I lived again. I smiled and laughed. For a long, weary month I had trailed about. I now ran up and down stairs. I lifted my arms to the sun and blessed him, as he rose in the heavens, because he was shining on my little boy. I tried to picture his nursery, his bassinet, his little gowns and flannels. “My household evidently thought me demented; but I knew that this joy had saved my reason. “During the next few days I scanned with eager eyes the births’ column in the ‘Times,’ making a list of the names and addresses of all the parents who had had sons on the 12th of September. “Oh, Nigel, Nigel! I little thought—a door-step! A deserted bundle! A Foundlings’ Institution! Oh, my dear, if I could have flown to that door-step and found you, and brought you home! But—did you not say there was a date on the label, the date of your birth, written beneath ‘Returned Empty’?” “Yes,” he said. “You shall see the label. There is a date.” He drew his chair near to the couch, so that he could reach her hands with his own. He took the label from his pocket-book, and laid it upon her lap. She lifted it and, bending toward him, read it by the firelight. RETURNED EMPTY _September 12th, 1883._ “Oh, Nigel,” she said, “the day—the very day!” “I know,” he answered. “I was listening for it as you talked. I felt it would come.” “And it is to-day,” she said. “To-day! This is your thirtieth birthday.” He looked at her with a wistful smile; a smile of such pathetic melancholy that it chilled her heart. “It is,” he said. “And nobody in the whole world knows it, save you and I.” She stretched out her hands. He took them in his and held them firmly. They looked into each other’s eyes in silence. “Speak to me,” she whispered. “Not yet,” he said. “You have more to tell. And it has always been my way to think long and steadily, and then to speak—and to speak to the point. You and I are facing an awful mystery; but at least we are facing it together.” Suddenly she felt herself before a judgment-seat.