"Child," he said, "as you look now, so she looked in the moment of our parting. Her eyes were like yours, and her face, God help me! as I saw it through the dark that last night, was as your face is now. Then I went away. I do not remember all the places, but they were in many lands, and were such places as men seek who carry my curse. I never wrote--I never saw her, face to face, again. "When I returned her father was dead, and she was married--to a good man, they told me--and there was a child that bore my name, Robin, for I had been called Robin Gray. And then there came a time when a stress was upon the land--when fortunes tottered and men walked the streets with unseeing eyes--when his wealth and then hers vanished like smoke in the wind--when my own patrimony became but worthless paper--a mockery of scrolled engravings and gaudy seals. To me it did not matter--nothing matters to one doomed. To them it was shipwreck. John Farnham, a high-strung, impetuous man, was struck down. The tension of those weeks, and the final blow, broke his spirit and undermined his strength. They had only a pittance and a little cottage in these mountains, which they had used as a camp for summer time. It stood then where it stands to-day, on the North Elba road, in view of this mountain top. There they came in the hope that Robin's father might regain health to renew the fight. There they remained, for the father had lost courage and only found a little health by tilling the few acres of ground about the cottage. There, that year, a second child--a little girl--was born." It had grown very still in the hermitage. There was only a drip of the rain outside--the thunder had rolled away. The voice, too, ceased for a little, as if from weariness. The others made no sign, but it seemed to Frank that the hand locked closely in his had become quite cold. "The word of those things drifted to me," so the tale went on, "and it made me sad that with my own depleted fortune and failing health I could do nothing for their comfort or relief. But one day my physician said to me that the air and the altitude of these mountains had been found beneficial for those stricken like me. He could not know how his words made my heart beat. Now, indeed, there was a reason for my coming--an excuse for being near her--with a chance of seeing her, it might be, though without her knowledge. For I decided that she must not know. Already she had enough burden without the thought that I was near--without the sight of my doleful, wasting features. "So I sold the few belongings that were still mine--such things as I had gathered in my wanderings--my books, save those I loved most dearly--my furnishings, my ornaments, even to my apparel--and with the money I bought the necessaries of mountain life--implements, rough wear and a store of food. These, with a tent, my gun, the few remaining volumes, and my field glass--the companion of all my travels--I brought to the hills."