should be the fruit of our sowing!"

CHAPTER IV.

ROSEWARNE'S PENANCE.

Beside the winding Avon above Warwick bridge there stretches a flat meadow, along the brink of which on a summer evening you may often count a score of anglers seated and watching their floats; decent citizens of Warwick, with a sprinkling of redcoats from the garrison. They say that two-thirds of the Trappist brotherhood are ex-soldiers; and perhaps if we knew the reason we might also know why angling has a peculiar fascination for the military.

Angling was but a pretext, however, with a young corporal of the 6th Regiment, who sat a few yards away on John Rosewarne's right, and smoked his pipe, and cast frequent furtive glances, now along the river path, now back and across the meadow where another path led from the town. Each of these glances ended in a resentful stare at his too-near neighbour, who fished on unregarding.

"Is this a favourite corner of yours?" the corporal asked after a while, with meaning.

"I have fished on this exact spot for thirty-five years," answered John Rosewarne, not lifting his eyes from the float.

The corporal whistled. "Thirty-five years! It's queer, now, that I never set eyes on you before—and I come here pretty often."

Rosewarne let a full minute go by before he answered again. "There's nothing queer about it, Unless you've been stationed long in Warwick."

"Best part of a year."

"Quite so: I fish in Avon once a year only."

"Belong to the town?"

"No; nor within two hundred miles of it."

"You must think better of the sport than I do, to come all that distance."

John Rosewarne lifted his eyes for the first time and turned them upon the young man.

"What sport?" he asked.

"Eh? Why, fishing, to be sure. What else?" stammered the corporal, taken aback.

"Tut!" said the old man curtly. "Here she comes. Now, what are you going to do?"

Without waiting for an answer, he bent his gaze on the float again, and kept it fastened there, as a pretty shop-girl came strolling along the river path. She had taken off her hat, of broad-brimmed straw with artificial poppies and cornflowers, and swung it in her hand as she came. Her eyes roamed the landscape carelessly, avoiding only that particular spot where the corporal, as she approached, scrambled to his feet; then, her start of surprise was admirable.

"Oh, it's you! Good-evening."

"Good-evening, miss."

"Why, whoever—! It seems to me you spend most of your time fishing."

She paused, gathering in her skirt a little—and this obviously was the cue for a gallant soldier. The corporal began, indeed, to wind up his line, but with a foolish grin and a glance at Rosewarne's back.

"It keeps beautiful weather," he answered at length.

"I call it sultry." She held out her hat with a little deprecating laugh. "I took it off for the sake of fresh air," she explained. Then, as he stood stock-still, a flush crept up her cheek to her pretty forehead.

"Well, good-evening; I won't interrupt you by talking," she said, and began to move away.

Come to think of it, it do look like thunder, "the corporal remarked to Rosewarne, staring after her and then up at the sky.

"If you had eyes in your head, you'd have seen that without her telling you. That cloud yonder has been rising against the wind for an hour. Look you along the bank, how every man Jack is unjointing his rod and making for home. Go, and leave me in peace!"

He did not turn his head even when the corporal, having packed together his gear, wished him good-night and hurried after the print frock as it vanished in the twilit shadows. One or two of the departing anglers paused as they went by to promise him that a storm was imminent and the fish had ceased feeding. He thanked them, yet sat on—solitary, in the leaden dusk.

The scene he had just witnessed—how it called up the irremediable past, with all the memories which had drawn him hither, summer after summer! And yet how common it was and minutely unimportant! Nightly by the banks of Avon couples had been courting—thousands in these thirty-five years— each of them dreaming, poor fools, that their moment's passion held the world in its hands. But the world teemed with rivers ten times lordlier than Avon—rivers stretching out in an endless map, with bridges on which lovers met and whispered, with banks down which they went with linked arms into the shadows—

"Were I but young for thee, as I hae been,
We should hae been gallopin' doun in yon green,
And linkin' it owre the lily-white lea—
And wow gin I were but young for thee!"

He had been young, and had loved and wronged a woman, and bitterly repented. He had married her, and marriage had killed neither love nor remorse. The woman was dead long since: he had married again, but never forgotten her nor ceased to repent. She, a pretty tradesman's daughter of Warwick, had collected her savings and taken ship for the West Indies, trusting to his word, facing a winter's passage in the sole hope that he would right her. Until the day of embarking she had never seen the sea; and the sea, after buffeting her to the verge of death, in the end betrayed her. A gale delayed the ship, and in the height of it her child was born. Rosewarne, a private soldier, went to his captain, as soon as she was landed, made a clean breast of it, and married her. But it was too late. She lived to return with him to England; but he knew well enough when she died that her sufferings on the passage out, and the abiding anguish of her shame, had killed her. A common tale! Men and women still go the way of their instinct, by which the race survives. "All the rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done."

A tale as common as sunset! Yet upon all rivers and upon every bridge and willow-walk along their courses the indifferent sun shines for each pair of fools with a difference, lighting their passion with a separate flame. The woman was dead; and he—he that had been young—sat face to face with death.

He leaned forward, oblivious of the clouded dusk, with his half-shut eyes watching the grey gleam of the river; but his mind's eye saw the shadowy mead behind him, and a girlish figure crossing it with feet that seemed to faint, holding her back from doom, yet to be impelled against their will.

They drew nearer. He heard their step, and faced about with a start. An actual woman stood there on the river path, most like in the dusk to that other of thirty-five years ago; but whereas she had worn a print frock, this one was clad in total black.

"Mr. Rosewarne,"—she began; but her words came to a halt, checked by a near flash of lightning and by what it revealed.

He was in the act of rising—had risen, in fact, on one knee—when a spasm of pain took him, and his hand went up to his breast. For a moment he knelt so, turning on her a face of anguish; then sank and dropped in a heap at her feet.

Quick as thought she was down on her knees beside him, and, slipping an arm beneath his head, drew it upon her lap. While with swift fingers she loosened his collar and neckcloth, a peal of thunder rumbled out, and the first large raindrops fell splashing on her hand. She recalled that last gesture of his, and with sudden inspiration searched in his breast-pocket, found and drew out a small phial, uncorked it, and forced the liquid between his teeth before they clenched in a second spasm. Two or three sharp flashes followed the first. In the glare of them her eyes searched along the river-bank, if haply help might be near; but all the anglers had departed. Rosewarne's face stared up at her, blue as a dead