“So he spoke as has been written to you, and then they had the Feast of the Yellow Swan, and that night--” He paused again, but presently, his voice a little husky, he went on: “That night he set out on a long journey,”--he lifted the letter and looked at it, then met the serious eyes of his daughter-in-law, “on a long journey to the Hills of the Mighty Men; and, my dear, he never came back; for, as he said, there was peace in the White Valley, and he would rest till the world should come to its Spring again, and the noise of its coming should be in his ears. Those, Lali, are his very words.” His hand closed on hers, he reached out and took the other hand, from which the paper fluttered, and clasped both tight in his own firm grasp. “My daughter,” he said, “you have another father.” With a low cry, like that of a fawn struck in the throat, she slid forward on her knees beside him, and buried her face on his arm. She understood. Her father was dead. Mrs. Armour came forward, and, kneeling also, drew the dark head to her bosom. Then that flood came which sweeps away the rust that gathers in the eyes and breaks through the closed dikes of the heart. Hours after, when she had fallen into a deep sleep, General Armour and his wife met outside her bedroom door. “I shall not leave her,” Mrs. Armour said. “Send for Frank. His time has almost come.” But it would not have come so soon had not something else occurred. The day that he came back from Scotland he entered his wife’s room, prepared for a change in her, yet he did not find so much to make him happy as he had hoped. She received him with a gentleness which touched him, she let her hand rest in his, she seemed glad to have him with her. All bars had been cast down between them, but he knew that she had not given him all, and she knew it also. But she hoped he did not know, and she dreaded the hour when he would speak out of his now full heart. He did not yet urge his affection on her, he was simply devoted, and watchful, and tender, and delightedly hopeful. But one night she came tapping at his door. When he opened it, she said: “Oh come, come! Richard is ill! I have sent for the doctor.” Henceforth she was her old self again, with a transformed spirit, her motherhood spending itself in a thousand ways. She who was weak bodily became now much stronger; the light of new vigour came to her eyes; she and her husband, in the common peril, worked together, thinking little of themselves, and all of the child. The last stage of the journey to happiness was being passed, and if it was not obvious to themselves, the others, Marion and Captain Vidall included, saw it. One anxious day, after the family doctor had left the sick child’s room, Marion, turning to the father and mother, said: “Greyhope will be itself again. I will go and tell Richard that the danger is over.”