It was Candlemas Eve at St. Mary's. All day Cecil had been in the woods gathering snowdrops for the shrine of the Virgin, and binding bay-leaves into wreaths to decorate Our Lady's Chapel. Now, at sunset, he was resting with his head against Margaret Brent's knee under the great mulberry-tree on the bluff. "Then the winter will be long?" "So they say." "And hard?" "That's what all the grandames tell." "Is it a falsehood or a truehood?" "True as most sayings belike." "Then, Marget." "Well?" "I think I'd best be up ere sunrise, and roll stones before all the holes, and I know five wherein ground-hogs live." Margaret Brent laughed. "That's just what Giles did once when he was little." "Wath Couthin Giles ever little--really little--like me?" "Yes, Cecil, little like you; and he and I were wont to chase butterflies through the English meadows, and it's small thought either he or I ever had that we should end our lives here in the wilderness." "End your lives!" To Cecil it was as impossible to conceive of an end as of a beginning to these grown-up people who always had been, and, of course, always would be, the backbone of his world. After a pause given to meditation he resumed,-- "What makes folks die?" "Oh! different things. They may be sick, or they may fall down stairs, or break their bones." "I see. Then they go up to God to get mended.--Marget!" "Ay." "I wish Mother would get God to mend her smile." "What's that?" "She used to have such a pretty smile, and now she only smiles when I make her." "Then see that thou dost make her smile often. Perchance 'tis thus that God will mend it. Come, Cecil, she will be waiting for us even now, and we shall catch the rheum if we sit longer on this damp ground." Cecil, always glad to be in motion, jumped up, and led the way home, his yellow curls bobbing along the path, as good as a lantern in the gloaming, as Margaret Brent told herself. At the cottage door Elinor stood bathed in the crimson light that flooded earth and sky. Her pale cheek had caught the rosy glow, and the damp February air had twisted her hair in soft clinging rings about her face. As she caught sight of Margaret and Cecil her lips parted in a welcoming smile, and she came down the path to meet them with arms outstretched. "Look, Couthin!" cried Cecil, "God's mending her already!" "Pray Heaven He does!" answered Margaret, under her breath. Then, after seeing the boy clasped in his mother's arms, she turned for a last look at the scene which she had left with reluctance, for it was one of the inconsistencies of Mistress Brent's practical nature to love the poetry of the twilight, and to be willing to barter all the noon-day hour for that last swift dip of the red sun behind the hills.