I daresay her brother Matt did what was the best for her. He laid his hand on her shoulder and bade her quietly come home. He had looked on in perplexed silence for the last few minutes, while he unscrewed his flute slowly, and put it away in his pocket. He did not try now to say anything comforting, but held his sister up in his strong grasp, for she was trembling too much to stand alone, and he led her away, her face hidden in her cloak. There were no more carols sung that year at Wyncliffe. A blank silence fell upon those who were left. Presently some one said, 'Poor Hildred!' They asked who brought the news, and Esther dried her eyes and began eagerly to tell all she knew. I stood listening with the rest. It was not much to hear, though told in many words. David Moore had come back wounded from India, to his home at the ferry-house. He was in Cuthbert's regiment, and he brought word that Cuthbert had been killed. 'Poor Cuthbert!' said many sorrowful voices. They all loved him. Not one here but thought of him kindly, and had been friends with him in the days that were gone. And I. Oh Cuthbert, God knows I loved you, God knows I mourned for you, bitterly, bitterly. It was ended then, the long hope, the fear we would not name, the watching for him who was never to come back. It was all over, and he was dead. Dead! that was a hard thing to believe. For there was no farewell to remember, no day to look back upon as the last day of his life; no single parting word; only a great blank and silence in our thoughts. He had been, and he was not. That was all. We should never know for certain the day nor the hour when we lost him. Only on some day, long ago now, when thinking nothing, we were busy about our common work, he had been dying a soldier's painful death, with perhaps a farewell word for us in his brave heart, that would never reach us. It had always seemed as if we feared so much, but we knew now how far stronger than our fears our hope had been. The blow could scarcely have fallen more heavily months ago, before we began to have the vague dread of evil that had darkened into utter night. I thought it all over as I went slowly homewards, with a dull quietness that it was very strange to feel. I remembered him as a boy, and could recall his great love to me, without more than a numb heartache, and a feeling of wonder that I was not more unhappy. I thought of a future in which I should be always lonely, and Hildred for ever broken-hearted, with a sort of pity for us both, as if I were but a looker-on at our lives. And yet I envied Hildred; for when I went late at night to ask after her, they told me that she had sobbed herself to sleep. For the moment she had escaped from trouble, and her stormy sorrow all left behind, she had gone away into the land of dreams, where tears are not.