Once she remembered, with a chill passing through her, that in the writing which she had read Dan had said he was ill? But what of that? She was going to him, and would nurse him back to health. And Davy Fayle, walking at her side, was full of his own big notions, too. Mastha Dan would be Dempster, true; but he'd have a boat for his pleasure, sarten sure. Davy Fayle would sail man in her, perhaps mate, and maybe skipper some day--who knows? And then--lying aft and drifting at the herrings, and smokin', and the stars out, and the moon makin' a peep--aw, well, well, well! They reached the end of their journey at last. It was in a small gorse-covered house far over the wild moor, on the edge of the Chasms, looking straight out on the hungry sea. In its one bare room (which was without fire, and was cheerless with little light) there was a table, a settle, a chair, a stool, and a sort of truckle-bed. Dan was there, the same, yet, oh, how different! He lay on the bed unconscious, near to death of the sickness--the last that the scourge was to slay. * * * * * Of this story of great love and great suffering what is left to tell? There are moments when life seems like the blind swirl of a bat in the dusk--blundering, irresponsible, not to be counted with, the swift creature of evil chance. We see a little child's white face at a hospital window, a strong man toiling hopelessly against wrong, the innocent suffering with the guilty, good instincts thwarted and base purposes promoted, and we ask ourselves, with a thrill of the heart, What, after all, is God doing in this His world? And from such blind laboring of chance the tired and beaten generations of men seem to find it reward enough to drop one after one to the hushed realms of rest. Shall we marvel very much if such a moment came to this pure and noble woman as she stood in the death-chamber of her beloved, with whom, after years of longing, she was at last brought face to face? But again, there are other moments, higher and better, when there is such a thing in this so bewildering world as the victory of vanquishment, when the true man crushed by evil chance is yet the true man undestroyed by it and destroying it, when Job on his dunghill is more to be envied than Pharaoh on his throne, and death is as good as life. And such a higher moment came to Mona in that death-chamber. She sat many hours by Dan's side, waiting for the breaking of his delirium and the brief space of consciousness and of peace which would be the beginning of the end. It came at long, long length, and, ah, how soon it came!