"Ah!" said another, taking his pipe out of his mouth to spit. "I should just like to come back and spoil all their fun!" But half an hour after, like the rest of his fellows, he was delving away, cutting the soft peat in great bricks, and heaving them out of the cutting, as he worked off his superabundant beer. But there was misery at Merland Castle, and more than once Jane McCray, sobbing, told her husband that she had thought it would have broken her heart when she saw poor dejected, wounded, pale John Gurdon, and gave him the money, and wished him a happy future, when he broke down, and cried like a child at receiving treatment he said he had never deserved; but it was nothing to this, seeing that poor wasted child waiting for the hours to pass before she was condemned to what would be like a death in life. For half-hysterical at times, an impression seemed to have come upon Isa Gernon that she would be fetched away, that even against her own will she would be saved from the fate that awaited her, and she started up, and listened, and looked from her window again and again for what did not come. Dresses were tried on, trunks were packed, presents poured in, bouquets, jewels, everything to give eclat to the proceedings; but Isa seemed to see nothing but one upbraiding face ever before her, reproaching her for her cruelty--a cruelty which she nerved herself by saying was but duty. Brace Norton knew all, even the time at which the wedding would take place; but he uttered no complaint, only wandered about hour after hour, telling himself that to-morrow all would be at an end, ending by reproaching himself for his inaction. Towards afternoon, he strolled out towards the marsh, and smiled bitterly a fierce, angry smile, as he saw the men busily cutting their way with the great drain towards the pit, from which he had saved the bride of the ensuing day. "Would we had died there together," he said, bitterly; and then he stooped, and picked a bunch of the forget-me-nots so abundant there, and tied them with one of the thin rushes from the mass at his feet. An hour after, enclosed in an envelope, they were laid on Isa's dressing-table, where she found them, and as had wept of old her mother, she had wept, for she guessed from whence that simple bouquet had come. She kissed them, held them to her breast, and then sank upon her knees, sobbing hysterically for the love she felt that, in spite of all revelations, she could not crush down, for she thought she was alone. But it was not so, for Jane McCray had entered unperceived, and started and turned pale as she saw the tiny flowers and the envelope in which they had arrived.