She wore to-day no chain-decked gown of cornflower blue, no roses in her withered cheeks. A cap, indeed, did crown her, coarse, but lily-white, and it shook ceaselessly with the trembling of her head. Yet, though her face was seamed beyond recognition and her full grey eyes sunken under lids plucked into innumerable tiny wrinkles, he knew at once that it was she; and the sight of her shrivelled body caused a contraction to close about his own frame. Her hands, twisted, spidery, and corded with blue veins, clutched at his heart. Where were the strong, firm hands that had so often lifted and soothed him,—dragged him home howling, too, and soundly smacked him?—He found himself longing for that heavy hand on his shoulder as for the kiss of his beloved. He crossed the flags and spoke her name, holding out eager arms. Just then, the house-door blew back with a clap and she turned her head and looked past him unseeingly, shivering a little as at the sharp mountain wind. “She does not know me,” he thought, conscience-stricken. “My fault!—how could she? I’ll not be alarming her with a stranger’s face.” Then, as she dropped her dim eyes to her book again: “She cannot see far. ’Tis old and weak her eyes are—she thinks it’s himself. I’ll go see can I find and prepare him; ’twill be best for him to break the news.” So great was the comfort the place bestowed, however, that he must watch her a few minutes, drawing near behind her chair. The years fell away and he felt as if he had recovered the very heart of his lost youth. A little four-legged stool stood close beside her skirts, and he longed to sit at her knee as he used, leaning his head against her and staring into the dull glow of the peat. The old ballads she used to sing to him there!—fresh conned from sheets bought at the fair and set to tunes of her own adaptation; the stories of “the people” who steal and change children; the saucer of cream you must set out All Hallows’ Eve for the fairies; the long Christmas candle of welcome, which burned before the open door against the coming of the Infant Saviour. What prayers grew on that hearth-stone!—rosaries for May nights, litanies. The rigors of fasting and abstinence he had known; black fasts, too, cheerfully kept. There had been then no timorous seeking of dispensation.—A question of health? Nonsense; a question of backsliders and turncoats! Men lived not by bread alone in those days, but by “the faith,” valiantly. Drawn to her irresistibly, he looked over her shoulder at the swaying book, eager to mark her special May devotion to Our Lady.—Would she be saying, “Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Grace,” or reiterating, “Morning Star, Pray for us; Health of the Weak, Pray for us; Comforter of the Afflicted——”? He bent his head to the black-marged page. She was tracing with tremulous finger, “Prayers for the Dead.”