kindly triviality of the questions showered upon him. “Yes, thank you, very well indeed. Yes, in Calcutta. Yes, enjoying herself, I think, thanks.” His pallor on these occasions, his look of hardened endurance, told Eppie all that it did not tell the others. And that his eagerness was too great for him to wait until after breakfast, she saw, too. A bright thought of rescue came to her at last. On the mornings when the Indian mail was due, she was up a good hour before her usual time. Long before the quaint, musical gong sounded its vague, blurred melody for prayers, she was out of the house and running through the birch-woods to the village road, where, just above the church, she met the postman. He was an old friend, glad to please the young lady’s love of importance, and the mail was trusted to her care. Eppie saved all her speed for the return. Every moment counted for Gavan’s sheltered reading. She felt as if, her back to its door, she stood before the sheltered chamber of their meeting, guarding their clasp and kiss, sweet and sorrowful, from alien eyes. Flushed, panting, she darted up to his room, handing his letter in to him, while she said in an easy, matter-of-fact tone, “Your mail, Gavan.”

Gavan, like the postman, attributed his good luck to Eppie’s love of importance, and only on the third morning discovered her manœuver.

He came down early himself to get his own letter, found that the mail had not arrived, and, strolling disappointedly down the drive, was almost knocked down by Eppie rushing in at the gate. She fell back, dismayed at the revelation that must force the fullness of her sympathy upon him—almost as if she herself glanced in at the place of meeting.

“I’ve got the letters,” she said, leaning on the stone pillar and recovering her breath. “There’s one for you.” And she held it out.

But for once Gavan’s concentration seemed to be for her rather than for the letter. “My mother’s letter?” he said.

She nodded.

“It was you, then. I wondered why they came so much earlier.”

“I met the postman; he likes to be saved that much of his walk.”

“You must have to go a long way to get them so early. You went on purpose for me, I think.”

Looking aside, she now had to own: “I saw that you hated reading them before us all. I would hate it, too.”

“Eppie, my dearest Eppie,” said Gavan. Glancing at him, she saw tears in his eyes, and joy and pride flamed up in her. He opened the letter and read it, walking beside her, his hand on her shoulder, showing her that he did not count her among “us all.”

After that they went together to meet the postman, and, unasked, Gavan would read to her long pieces from what his mother said.

It was a few weeks later, on one of these days, that she knew, from his face while he read, and from his silence, that bad news had come. He left her at the house, making no confidence, and at breakfast, when he came down to it later, she could see that he had been struggling for self-mastery. This pale, controlled face, at which she glanced furtively while they did their lessons in the library, made her think of the Spartan boy, calm over an agony. Even the general noticed the mechanical voice and the pallor and asked him if he were feeling tired this morning. Gavan owned to a headache.

“Off to the moors directly, then,” said the general; “and you, too, Eppie. Have a morning together.”

Eppie sat over her book and said that perhaps Gavan would rather go without her; but Gavan, who had risen, said quickly that he wanted her to come. “Let us go to the hilltop,” he said, when they were outside in the warm, scented sunlight.

They went through the woods, where the burn ran, rippling loudly, and the shadows were blue on the little, sandy path that wound among pines and birches. Neither spoke while they climbed the gradual ascent. They came out upon the height that ran in a long undulation to the far lift of mountain ranges. Under a solitary group of pines they sat down.

The woods of Kirklands were below them, and then the vast sea of purple, heaving in broad, long waves to the azure, intense and clear, of the horizon. The wind sighed, soft and shrill, through the pines above them, and far away they heard a sheep-bell tinkle. Beyond the delicate miniature of the village a wind-mill turned slow, gray sails. The whole world, seemed a sunlit island floating in the circling blue. Robbie sat at their feet, alert, upright, silhouetted against the sky.

“Robbie, Robbie,” said Gavan, gently, as he leaned forward and stroked the dog’s back. Eppie, too, stroked with him. The silence of his unknown grief weighed heavily on her heart and she guessed that though for him the pain of silence was great, the pain of speech seemed greater.