She came in soon, and sat down in her wonted chair by the fire. "There's your ivy, John," said she; "'tis raw and chilly in the garden, and I love the fireside better." "'Tis well," I thought, "she has not seen Master Semple." Now I could not suffer him to depart without meeting him again, partly out of pity for the man, partly to assure my own mind that no harm would come of it. So I feigned an errand and went out. I found him, as I guessed, still in the elder-bush, a tenfold stranger sight than before. His eyes burned uncannily. His thin cheeks seemed almost transparent with the tension of the bones, and he chewed his lips unceasingly. At the sight of me he came out and stood before me, as wild a figure as I ever hope to see--clothes in tatters, hair unkempt, and skin all foul with the dirt of the moors. His back was bowed, and his knees seemed to have lost all strength, for they tottered against one another. I prayed that his sufferings might not have turned him mad. At the first word he spake I was convinced of it. "I have seen her, I have seen her!" he cried. "She is more fair than a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. Oh, I have dreamed of her by night among the hills, and seen her face close to me and tried to catch it, but 'twas gone. Oh, man, John, get down on your knees, and pray to God to make you worthy to have the charge of such a treasure. Had the Lord not foreordained that she should be mine, I should ne'er have lifted up my eyes to her, for who am I?" "For God's sake, man," I broke in, "tell me where you are going, and be about it quick, for you may be in instant danger." "Ay," says he, "you are right. I must be gone. I have seen enough. I maun away to the deserts and caves of the rocks, and it may be lang, lang ere I come back. But my love winna forget me. Na, na; the Lord hath appointed unto me that I shall sit at his right hand on the last, the great day, and she shall be by my side. For oh, she is the only one of her mother; she is the choice one of her that bare her; the daughters saw her and blessed her; yea, the queens and concubines, and they praised her." And with some like gibberish from the Scriptures he disappeared through the bushes, and next minute I saw him running along the moor toward the hills. These were no love-sick ravings, but the wild cries of a madman, one whose reason had gone forever. I walked back slowly to the house. It seemed almost profane to think of Anne, so wholesome and sane, in the same thought as this foul idiot; and yet this man had been once as whole in mind and body as myself; he had suffered in a valiant cause; and I was bound to him by the strongest of all bonds--my plighted word. I groaned inwardly as I shut the house-door behind me and entered into the arena of my struggles. CHAPTER IX. I COMMUNE WITH MYSELF.