"She walked slowly and the child walked with her, holding her hand. When presently she looked toward me, I started and shrank, forgetting for the moment that she could not see me. Not that I could distinguish her features at such a range, only her dear outline, but in my mind's eyes her face was there before me just as I had seen it that last time--just as I have seen yours in the firelight." He turned to Constance, whose features had become blurred in the shadows. Frank felt her tremble and caught the sound of a repressed sob. He knew the tears were streaming down her cheeks, and his own eyes were not dry. "After that I saw her often, and sometimes the infant, Robin's sister, was in her arms. When the autumn came, and the hills were glorified, and crowned with snow, she stood many times in the door-yard to behold their wonder. When at last the leaves fell, and the trees were bare, I could watch even from the door of my little hut. The winter was long--the winter is always long up here--from November almost till May--but it did not seem long to me, when she was brought there to my door, even though I might not speak to her. "And so I lived my life with her. The life in that cottage became my life--day by day, week by week, year by year--and she never knew. After that first summer I never but once left the mountain top. All my wants I supplied here. There was much game of every sort, and the fish near by were plentiful. I had a store of meal for the first winter, and during the next summer I cultivated my bit of cleared ground, and produced my full need of grain and vegetables and condiments. One trip I made to a distant village for seeds, and from that day never left the mountain again. "It was during the fifth winter, I think, after I came here, that a group of neighbors gathered in the door-yard of the cottage, and my heart stood still, for I feared that she was dead. The air dazzled that day, but when near evening I saw a woman with a hand to each child re-enter the little house I knew that she still lived--and had been left alone. "Oh, then my heart went out to her! Day and night I battled with the impulse to go to her, with love and such comfort and protection as I could give. Time and again I rose and made ready for the journey to her door. Then, oh, then I would remember that I had nothing to offer her--nothing but my love. Penniless, and a dying man, likely to become a helpless burden at any time, what could I bring to her but added grief. And perhaps in her unconscious heart she knew. For more than once that winter, when the trees were stripped and the snow was on the hills, I saw her gaze long and long toward this mountain, as if she saw the speck my cabin made, and once when I stretched my arms out to her across the waste of deadly cold, I saw a moment later that her arms, too, were out-stretched, as if somehow she knew that I was there." A low moan interrupted the tale. It was from Constance.