Two years more passed, and Master Jack Hunter was seven years old. On his seventh birthday his mother dressed him and herself carefully and rode over to the lonely graveyard. She did not go flower-laden. Rather, she went as was her custom, to spend an hour with the quiet dead in silent thought. Hugh Noland's sacrifice had not been in vain. The life he had laid down had, whatever its mistakes and weaknesses, been a happy one to himself, and had carried a ray of cheer to all with whom it had come in contact, while his death had pointed toward an ideal of purity, in spite of failures. That brief period during which Elizabeth had been compelled to live a double life for his sake had held many lessons, and had forever weaned her from duplicity of any sort. Those special hours--the hours spent beside Hugh Noland's grave--were spent in searching self-inquiry, in casting up accounts, in measuring herself against the principles with which she struggled. People had gone out of her wrestlings; principles remained. Here Elizabeth meditated upon the fact that because the neighbourhood sentiment and discussion centred around their home, she and John Hunter had missed a golden opportunity in not having become a force for good during those first years of their marriage. The hour spent beside Hugh's grave was her sacrament. There she went to renew her faith in her own powers, which Hugh's interest and estimates had first taught her to recognize; there she went to renew her vows of higher living, and there to contemplate the freedom which Hugh Noland had given her. But for the land and stock which gave her an independent income she would have been as tearful, worn, and despondent as many of the women about her. Her heart was very tender toward Hugh as she sat beside his grave to-day. She held his letter--the only one he had ever written, her--in her hands. As she read it over, part of its last sentence, "and will, I hope, help toward emancipating you from care," struck her attention, and her eyes filled with tears. "What is it, mamma? What hurts?" Jack asked, always quick to respond to his mother's moods. "Nothing, dear, but Uncle Hugh's letter. He wrote it just before he died. He was very kind to me," she said, patting the face thrust up for a kiss. "Was--was my papa here then?" the child asked, curious about the life he could not remember, and trying to relate things as he heard of them in their true relation to the father who was a mysterious personage and therefore interesting. When his mother did not answer, he crept closer and, laying his head against her arm, said wistfully: "Mamma, will my papa ever come back to us?" "I don't know, Jack," she answered quietly. "Perhaps. If he don't, you shall go and see him when you are a big boy. Now run away, and leave mamma a chance to think for a whole ten minutes."