Sometimes at night I thought I had made something very good, and went to sleep contented, but in the morning, when I said over my verses, all the meaning seemed to have gone out of them. I said to myself at last, 'You are very weak, and Nature is very strong. She can speak to your heart and tell you all things; but it is not given you to repeat what she says to others. From henceforth listen, but in silence.' And so I gave up making verses. I have listened all my life long, and now that I am old, I try once more to say a little of what I have been hearing all these years. And perhaps because I am more humble and expect less, perhaps because my eye and ear are growing duller, I am not so discontented as I once was. I know my words are poor, but I am waiting. Soon I shall learn the new song that they sing up there, beyond the sunlight, and then I shall be satisfied. However, I had not got to that yet. I went on trying to find my rhyme, and failed, as better people may have done before me. It was a pity. The word winsome might have been made for Hildred. Mistress Dorothy Morton, years ago, had called her the picture of a child. I am sure she was the picture of a maiden now. It was a very fair flower that had bloomed in our grey old ruin. Those bygone times, when we used to let Hildred go about with us now and then, as a great treat for her, were very wonderful to look back to. Now I prized every minute that she lighted up with her sunbeam pleasure. The knowledge of what she was to me, had come so gradually that I cannot remember when I first felt that my life-choice was made, and that the world held for me but one thing worth living for. I had been sure of it for many a long day, before I dreamed of putting the love I bore her into words. Nearly all my life it must have lain deep down in my heart, like a seed that, buried in the ground, waits for the coming of the spring; and now, in the spring and sunshine of my young manhood, it had risen up in blossom and in fruit. 'Willie, here comes your father,' said Hildred presently, jumping up and running off to meet him. They liked each other, those two. My father--it was no wonder certainly--had smiles and even words for her, such as he was never known to bestow on anyone else. Hildred was not a bit afraid of him, though other people said he became more 'dour' and hard as he got on in life. She came along by his side now, suiting her light footsteps to his heavy tread; he nodded now and then in answer to her merry chatter, and a look of slow contentment stole over his face. She made him stop for a moment to watch the wood-cutters, and as they stood looking on, the tree came crashing down at last. Our idling time was over as soon as my father came. I turned away, and Hildred raised the bundle of sticks on to her head, and moved towards home. 'I haven't been losing much time,' she said, looking up at him merrily from under its shadow. 'Look, all these for Granny.'