Excepting that he took leave of Betsey, the servant-maid, with great cordiality, Uncle Joseph spoke not another word, after his parting reply to Mr. Munder, until he and his niece were alone again under the east wall of Porthgenna Tower. There he paused, looked up at the house, then at his companion, then back at the house once more, and at last opened his lips to speak.

“I am sorry, my child,” he said⁠—“I am sorry from my heart. This has been what you call in England a bad job.”

Thinking that he referred to the scene which had just passed in the housekeeper’s room, Sarah asked his pardon for having been the innocent means of bringing him into angry collision with such a person as Mr. Munder.

“No! no! no!” he cried. “I was not thinking of the man of the big body and the big words. He made me angry, it is not to be denied; but that is all over and gone now. I put him and his big words away from me, as I kick this stone, here, from the pathway into the road. It is not of your Munders, or your housekeepers, or your Betzees, that I now speak⁠—it is of something that is nearer to you and nearer to me also, because I make of your interest my own interest too. I shall tell you what it is while we walk on⁠—for I see in your face, Sarah, that you are restless and in fear so long as we stop in the neighborhood of this dungeon-house. Come! I am ready for the march. There is the path. Let us go back by it, and pick up our little baggages at the inn where we left them, on the other side of this windy wilderness of a place.”

“Yes, yes, uncle! Let us lose no time; let us walk fast. Don’t be afraid of tiring me; I am much stronger now.”

They turned into the same path by which they had approached Porthgenna Tower in the afternoon. By the time they had walked over a little more than the first hundred yards of their journey, Jacob, the gardener’s boy, stole out from behind the ruinous enclosure at the north side of the house with his hoe in his hand. The sun had just set, but there was a fine light still over the wide, open surface of the moor; and Jacob paused to let the old man and his niece get farther away from the building before he followed them. The housekeeper’s instructions had directed him just to keep them in sight, and no more; and, if he happened to observe that they stopped and turned round to look behind them, he was to stop, too, and pretend to be digging with his hoe, as if he was at work on the moorland. Stimulated by the promise of a sixpence, if he was careful to do exactly as he had been told, Jacob kept his instructions in his memory, and kept his eye on the two strangers, and promised as fairly to earn the reward in prospect for him as a boy could.

“And now, my child, I shall tell you what it is I am sorry for,” resumed Uncle Joseph, as they proceeded along the path. “I am sorry that we have come out upon this journey, and run our little risk, and had our little scolding, and gained nothing. The word you said in my ear, Sarah, when I was getting you out of the faint (and you should have come out of it sooner, if the muddleheaded people of the dungeon-house had been quicker with the water)⁠—the word you said in my ear was not much, but it was enough to tell me that we have taken this journey in vain. I may hold my tongue, I may make my best face at it, I may be content to walk blindfolded with a mystery that lets no peep of daylight into my eyes⁠—but it is not the less true that the one thing your heart was most set on doing, when we started on this journey, is the one thing also that you have not done. I know that, if I know nothing else; and I say again, it is a bad job⁠—yes, yes, upon my life and faith, there is no disguise to put upon it; it is, in your plainest English, a very bad job.”

As he concluded the expression of his sympathy in these quaint terms, the dread and distrust, the watchful terror, that marred the natural softness of Sarah’s eyes, disappeared in an expression of sorrowful tenderness, which seemed to give back to them all their beauty.

“Don’t be sorry for me, uncle,” she said, stopping, and gently brushing away with her hand some specks of dust that lay on the collar of his coat. “I have suffered so much and suffered so long, that the heaviest disappointments pass lightly over me now.”

“I won’t hear you say it!” cried Uncle Joseph. “You give me shocks I can’t bear when you talk to me in this way. You shall have no more disappointments⁠—no, you shall not! I, Joseph Buschmann, the Obstinate, the Pigheaded, I say it!”

“The day when I shall have no more disappointments, uncle, is not far off now. Let me wait a little longer, and endure a little longer: I have learned to be patient, and to hope for nothing. Fearing and failing, fearing and failing⁠—that has been my life ever since I was a young woman⁠—the life I have become used to by this time. If you are surprised, as I know you must be, at my not possessing myself of the letter, when I had the keys of the Myrtle Room in my hand, and when no one was near to stop me, remember the history of my life, and take that as an explanation. Fearing and failing, fearing and failing⁠—if I told you all the truth, I could tell no more than that. Let us walk on, uncle.”

The resignation in her voice and manner while she spoke was the resignation of despair. It gave her an unnatural self-possession, which altered her, in the eyes of Uncle Joseph, almost past recognition. He looked at her in undisguised alarm.

“No!” he said, “we will not walk on; we will walk back to the dungeon-house; we will make another plan; we will try to get at this devil’s imp of a letter in some other way. I care for no Munders, no housekeepers, no Betzees⁠—I! I care for nothing but the getting you the one thing you want, and the taking you home again as easy in your mind as I am myself. Come! let us go back.”

“It is too late to go back.”

“How too late? Ah, dismal, dingy, dungeon-house of the devil, how I hate you!” cried Uncle Joseph, looking back over the prospect, and shaking both his fists at Porthgenna Tower.

“It is too late, uncle,” she repeated. “Too late, because the opportunity is lost; too late, because if I could bring it back, I dare not go near the Myrtle Room again. My last hope was to change the hiding-place of the letter⁠—and that last hope I have given up. I have only one object in life left now; you may help me in it; but I can not tell you how unless you come on with me at once⁠—unless you say nothing more about going back to Porthgenna Tower.”

Uncle Joseph began to expostulate. His niece stopped him in the middle of a sentence, by touching him on the shoulder and pointing to a particular spot on the darkening slope of the moor below them.

“Look!” she said, “there is somebody on the path behind us. Is it a boy or a man?”

Uncle Joseph looked through the fading light, and saw a figure at some little distance. It seemed like the figure of a boy, and he was apparently engaged in digging on the moor.

“Let us turn round, and go on at once,” pleaded Sarah, before the old man could answer her. “I can’t say what I want to say to you, uncle, until we are safe under shelter at the inn.”

They went on until they reached the highest ground on the moor. There they stopped, and looked back again. The rest of their way lay down hill; and the spot on which they stood was the last point from which a view could be obtained of Porthgenna Tower.

“We have lost sight of the boy,” said Uncle Joseph, looking over the ground below them.

Sarah’s younger and sharper eyes bore witness to the truth of her uncle’s words⁠—the view over the moor was lonely now, in every direction, as far as she could see. Before going on again, she moved a little away from the old man, and looked at the tower of the ancient house, rising heavy and black in the dim light, with the dark sea background stretching behind it like a wall. “Never again!” she whispered to herself. “Never, never, never again!” Her eyes wandered away to the church, and to the cemetery enclosure by its side, barely distinguishable now in the shadows of the coming night. “Wait for me a little longer,” she said, looking toward the burial-ground with straining eyes, and pressing her hand on her bosom over the place where the book of Hymns lay hid. “My wanderings are nearly at an end; the day for my coming home again is not far off!”

The tears filled her eyes and shut out the view. She rejoined her uncle, and, taking his arm again, drew him rapidly a few steps along the downward path⁠—then checked herself, as if struck by a sudden suspicion, and walked back a few paces to the highest ridge of the ground. “I am not sure,” she said, replying to her companion’s look of surprise⁠—“I am not sure whether we have seen the last yet of that boy who was digging on the moor.”

As the words passed her lips, a figure stole out from behind one of the large fragments of granite rock which were scattered over the waste on all sides of them. It was once more the figure of the boy, and again he began to dig, without the slightest apparent reason, on the barren ground at his feet.

“Yes, yes, I see,” said Uncle Joseph, as his niece eagerly directed his attention to the suspicious figure. “It is the same boy, and he is digging still⁠—and, if you please, what of that?”

Sarah did not attempt to answer. “Let us get on,” she said, hurriedly. “Let us get on as fast as we can to the inn.”

They turned again, and took the downward path before them. In less than a minute they had lost sight of Porthgenna Tower, of the old church, and of the whole of the western view. Still, though there was now nothing but the blank darkening moorland to look back at, Sarah persisted in stopping at frequent intervals, as long as there was any light left, to glance behind her. She made no remark, she offered no excuse for thus delaying the journey back to the inn. It was only when they arrived within sight of the lights of the post-town that she ceased looking back, and that she spoke to her companion. The few words she addressed to him amounted to nothing more than a request that he would ask for a private sitting-room as soon as they reached their place of sojourn for the night.

They ordered beds at the inn, and were shown into the best parlor to wait for supper. The moment they were alone, Sarah drew a chair close to the old man’s side, and whispered these words in his ear⁠—

“Uncle! we have been followed every step of the way from Porthgenna Tower to this place.”

“So! so! And how do you know that?” inquired Uncle Joseph.

“Hush! Somebody may be listening at the door, somebody may be creeping under the window. You noticed that boy who was digging on the moor?⁠—”

“Bah! Why, Sarah! do you frighten yourself, do you try to frighten me about a boy?”

“Oh, not so loud! not so loud! They have laid a trap for us. Uncle! I suspected it when we first entered the doors of Porthgenna Tower; I am sure of it now. What did all that whispering mean between the housekeeper and the steward when we first got into the hall? I watched their faces, and I know they were talking about us. They were not half surprised enough at seeing us, not half surprised enough at hearing what we wanted. Don’t laugh at me, uncle! There is real danger: it is no fancy of mine. The keys⁠—come closer⁠—the keys of the north rooms have got new labels on them; the doors have all been numbered. Think of that! Think of the whispering when we came in, and the whispering afterward, in the housekeeper’s room, when you got up to go away. You noticed the sudden change in that man’s behavior after the housekeeper spoke to him⁠—you must have noticed it? They let us in too easily, and they let us out too easily. No, no! I am not deluding myself. There was some secret motive for letting us into the house, and some secret motive for letting us out again. That boy on the moor betrays it, if nothing else does. I saw him following us all the way here, as plainly as I see you. I am not frightened without reason, this time. As surely as we two are together in this room, there is a trap laid for us by the people at Porthgenna Tower!”

“A trap? What trap? And how? and why? and wherefore?” inquired Uncle Joseph, expressing bewilderment by waving both his hands rapidly to and fro close before his eyes.

“They want to make me speak, they want to follow me, they want to find out where I go, they want to ask me questions,” she answered, trembling violently. “Uncle! you remember what I told you of those crazed words I said to Mrs. Frankland⁠—I ought to have cut my tongue out rather than have spoken them! They have done dreadful mischief⁠—I am certain of it⁠—dreadful mischief already. I have made myself suspected! I shall be questioned, if Mrs. Frankland finds me out again. She will try to find me out⁠—we shall be inquired after here⁠—we must destroy all trace of where we go to next⁠—we must make sure that the people at this inn can answer no questions⁠—oh, Uncle Joseph! whatever we do, let us make sure of that!”

“Good,” said the old man, nodding his head with a perfectly self-satisfied air. “Be quite easy, my child, and leave it to me to make sure. When you are gone to bed, I shall send for the landlord, and I shall say, ‘Get us a little carriage, if you please, Sir, to take us back again tomorrow to the coach for Truro.’ ”

“No, no, no! we must not hire a carriage here.”

“And I say, yes, yes, yes! We will hire a carriage here, because I will, first of all, make sure with the landlord. Listen. I shall say to him, ‘If there come after us people with inquisitive looks in their eyes and uncomfortable questions in their mouths⁠—if you please, Sir, hold your tongue.’ Then I shall wink my eye, I shall lay my finger, so, to the side of my nose, I shall give one little laugh that means much⁠—and, crick! crack! I have made sure of the landlord! and there is an end of it!”

“We must not trust the landlord, uncle⁠—we must not trust anybody. When we leave this place tomorrow, we must leave it on foot, and take care no living soul follows us. Look! here is a map of West Cornwall hanging up on the wall, with roads and crossroads all marked on it. We may find out beforehand what direction we ought to walk in. A night’s rest will give me all the strength I want; and we have no luggage that we can not carry. You have nothing but your knapsack, and I have nothing but the little carpetbag you lent me. We can walk six, seven, even ten miles, with resting by the way. Come here and look at the map⁠—pray, pray come and look at the map!”

Protesting against the abandonment of his own project, which he declared, and sincerely believed, to be perfectly adapted to meet the emergency in which they were placed, Uncle Joseph joined his niece in examining the map. A little beyond the post-town, a crossroad was marked, running northward at right angles with the highway that led to Truro, and conducting to another road, which looked large enough to be a coach-road, and which led through a town of sufficient importance to have its name printed in capital letters. On discovering this, Sarah proposed that they should follow the crossroad (which did not appear on the map to be more than five or six miles long) on foot, abstaining from taking any conveyance until they had arrived at the town marked in capital letters. By pursuing this course, they would destroy all trace of their progress after leaving the post-town⁠—unless, indeed, they were followed on foot from this place, as they had been followed over the moor. In the event of any fresh difficulty of that sort occurring, Sarah had no better remedy to propose than lingering on the road till after nightfall, and leaving it to the darkness to baffle the vigilance of any person who might be watching in the distance to see where they went.

Uncle Joseph shrugged his shoulders resignedly when his niece gave her reasons for wishing to continue the journey on foot. “There is much tramping through dust, and much looking behind us, and much spying and peeping and suspecting and roundabout walking in all this,” he said. “It is by no means so easy, my child, as making sure of the landlord, and sitting at our ease on the cushions of the stagecoach. But if you will have it so, so shall it be. What you please, Sarah; what you please⁠—that is all the opinion of my own that I allow myself to have till we are back again at Truro, and are rested for good and all at the end of our journey.”

“At the end of your journey, uncle: I dare not say at the end of mine.”

Those few words changed the old man’s face in an instant. His eyes fixed reproachfully on his niece, his ruddy cheeks lost their color, his restless hands dropped suddenly to his sides. “Sarah!” he said, in a low, quiet tone, which seemed to have no relation to the voice in which he spoke on ordinary occasions⁠—“Sarah! have you the heart to leave me again?”

“Have I the courage to stay in Cornwall? That is the question to ask me, uncle. If I had only my own heart to consult, oh! how gladly I should live under your roof⁠—live under it, if you would let me, to my dying day! But my lot is not cast for such rest and such happiness as that. The fear that I have of being questioned by Mrs. Frankland drives me away from Porthgenna, away from Cornwall, away from you. Even my dread of the letter being found is hardly so great now as my dread of being traced and questioned. I have said what I ought not to have said already. If I find myself in Mrs. Frankland’s presence again, there is nothing that she might not draw out of me. Oh, my God! to think of that kindhearted, lovely young woman, who brings happiness with her wherever she goes, bringing terror to me! Terror when her pitying eyes look at me; terror when her kind voice speaks to me; terror when her tender hand touches mine! Uncle! when Mrs. Frankland comes to Porthgenna, the very children will crowd about her⁠—every creature in that poor village will be drawn toward the light of her beauty and her goodness, as if it was the sunshine of Heaven itself; and I⁠—I, of all living beings⁠—must shun her as if she was a pestilence! The day when she comes into Cornwall is the day when I must go out of it⁠—the day when we two must say farewell. Don’t, don’t add to my wretchedness by asking me if I have the heart to leave you! For my dead mother’s sake, Uncle Joseph, believe that I am grateful, believe that it is not my own will that takes me away when I leave you again.” She sank down on a sofa near her, laid her head, with one long, deep sigh, wearily on the pillow, and spoke no more.

The tears gathered thick in Uncle Joseph’s eyes as he sat down by her side. He took one of her hands, and patted and stroked it as though he were soothing a little child. “I will bear it as well as I can, Sarah,” he whispered, faintly, “and I will say no more. You will write to me sometimes, when I am left all alone? You will give a little time to Uncle Joseph, for the poor dead mother’s sake?”

She turned toward him suddenly, and threw both her arms round his neck with a passionate energy that was strangely at variance with her naturally quiet self-repressed character. “I will write often, dear; I will write always,” she whispered, with her head on his bosom. “If I am ever in any trouble or danger, you shall know it.” She stopped confusedly, as if the freedom of her own words and actions terrified her, unclasped her arms, and, turning away abruptly from the old man, hid her face in her hands. The tyranny of the restraint that governed her whole life was all expressed⁠—how sadly, how eloquently!⁠—in that one little action.

Uncle Joseph rose from the sofa, and walked gently backward and forward in the room, looking anxiously at his niece, but not speaking to her. After a while the servant came in to prepare the table for supper. It was a welcome interruption, for it obliged Sarah to make an effort to recover her self-possession. After the meal was over, the uncle and niece separated at once for the night, without venturing to exchange another word on the subject of their approaching separation.

When they met the next morning, the old man had not recovered his spirits. Although he tried to speak as cheerfully as usual, there was something strangely subdued and quiet about him in voice, look, and manner. Sarah’s heart smote her as she saw how sadly he was altered by the prospect of their parting. She said a few words of consolation and hope; but he only waved his hand negatively, in his quaint foreign manner, and hastened out of the room to find the landlord and ask for the bill.

Soon after breakfast, to the surprise of the people at the inn, they set forth to continue their journey on foot, Uncle Joseph carrying his knapsack on his back, and his niece’s carpetbag in his hand. When they arrived at the turning that led into the crossroad, they both stopped and looked back. This time they saw nothing to alarm them. There was no living creature visible on the broad highway over which they had been walking for the last quarter of an hour after leaving the inn.

“The way is clear,” said Uncle Joseph, as they turned into the crossroad. “Whatever might have happened yesterday, there is nobody following us now.”

“Nobody that we can see,” answered Sarah. “But I distrust the very stones by the roadside. Let us look back often, uncle, before we allow ourselves to feel secure. The more I think of it, the more I dread the snare that is laid for us by those people at Porthgenna Tower.”

“You say us, Sarah. Why should they lay a snare for me?”

“Because they have seen you in my company. You will be safer from them when we are parted; and that is another reason, Uncle Joseph, why we should bear the misfortune of our separation as patiently as we can.”

“Are you going far, very far away, Sarah, when you leave me?”

“I dare not stop on my journey till I can feel that I am lost in the great world of London. Don’t look at me so sadly! I shall never forget my promise; I shall never forget to write. I have friends⁠—not friends like you, but still friends⁠—to whom I can go. I can feel safe from discovery nowhere but in London. My danger is great⁠—it is, it is, indeed! I know, from what I have seen at Porthgenna, that Mrs. Frankland has an interest already in finding me out; and I am certain that this interest will be increased tenfold when she hears (as she is sure to hear) of what happened yesterday in the house. If they should trace you to Truro, oh, be careful, uncle! be careful how you deal with them; be careful how you answer their questions!”

“I will answer nothing, my child. But tell me⁠—for I want to know all the little chances that there are of your coming back⁠—tell me, if Mrs. Frankland finds the letter, what shall you do then?”

At that question, Sarah’s hand, which had been resting languidly on her uncle’s arm while they walked together, closed on it suddenly. “Even if Mrs. Frankland gets into the Myrtle Room,” she said, stopping and looking affrightedly about her while she replied, “she may not find the letter. It is folded up so small; it is hidden in such an unlikely place.”

“But if she does find it?”

“If she does, there will be more reason than ever for my being miles and miles away.”

As she gave that answer, she raised both her hands to her heart, and pressed them firmly over it. A slight distortion passed rapidly across her features; her eyes closed; her face flushed all over⁠—then turned paler again than ever. She drew out her pocket-handkerchief, and passed it several times over her face, on which the perspiration had gathered thickly. The old man, who had looked behind him when his niece stopped, under the impression that she had just seen somebody following them, observed this latter action, and asked if she felt too hot. She shook her head, and took his arm again to go on, breathing, as he fancied, with some difficulty. He proposed that they should sit down by the roadside and rest a little; but she only answered, “Not yet.” So they went on for another half-hour; then turned to look behind them again, and, still seeing nobody, sat down for a little while to rest on a bank by the wayside.

After stopping twice more at convenient resting-places, they reached the end of the crossroad. On the highway to which it led them they were overtaken by a man driving an empty cart, who offered to give them a lift as far as the next town. They accepted the proposal gratefully; and, arriving at the town, after a drive of half an hour, were set down at the door of the principal inn. Finding on inquiry at this place that they were too late for the coach, they took a private conveyance, which brought them to Truro late in the afternoon. Throughout the whole of the journey, from the time when they left the post-town of Porthgenna to the time when they stopped, by Sarah’s desire, at the coach-office in Truro, they had seen nothing to excite the smallest suspicion that their movements were being observed. None of the people whom they saw in the inhabited places, or whom they passed on the road, appeared to take more than the most casual notice of them.

It was five o’clock when they entered the office at Truro to ask about conveyances running in the direction of Exeter. They were informed that a coach would start in an hour’s time, and that another coach would pass through Truro at eight o’clock the next morning.

“You will not go tonight?” pleaded Uncle Joseph. “You will wait, my child, and rest with me till tomorrow?”

“I had better go, uncle, while I have some little resolution left,” was the sad answer.

“But you are so pale, so tired, so weak.”

“I shall never be stronger than I am now. Don’t set my own heart against me! It is hard enough to go without that.”

Uncle Joseph sighed, and said no more. He led the way across the road and down the by-street to his house. The cheerful man in the shop was polishing a piece of wood behind the counter, sitting in the same position in which Sarah had seen him when she first looked through the window on her arrival at Truro. He had good news for his master of orders received, but Uncle Joseph listened absently to all that his shopman said, and hastened into the little back parlor without the faintest reflection of its customary smile on his face. “If I had no shop and no orders, I might go away with you, Sarah,” he said when he and his niece were alone. “Aïe! Aïe! the setting out on this journey has been the only happy part of it. Sit down and rest, my child. I must put my best face upon it, and get you some tea.”

When the tea-tray had been placed on the table, he left the room, and returned, after an absence of some little time, with a basket in his hand. When the porter came to carry the luggage to the coach-office, he would not allow the basket to be taken away at the same time, but sat down and placed it between his feet while he occupied himself in pouring out a cup of tea for his niece.

The musical box still hung at his side in its traveling-case of leather. As soon as he had poured out the cup of tea, he unbuckled the strap, removed the covering from the box, and placed it on the table near him. His eyes wandered hesitatingly toward Sarah, as he did this; he leaned forward, his lips trembling a little, his hand trifling uneasily with the empty leather case that now lay on his knees, and said to her in low, unsteady tones⁠—

“You will hear a little farewell song of Mozart? It may be a long time, Sarah, before he can play to you again. A little farewell song, my child, before you go?”

His hand stole up gently from the leather case to the table, and set the box playing the same air that Sarah had heard on the evening when she entered the parlor, after her journey from Somersetshire, and found him sitting alone listening to the music. What depths of sorrow there were now in those few simple notes! What mournful memories of past times gathered and swelled in the heart at the bidding of that one little plaintive melody! Sarah could not summon the courage to lift her eyes to the old man’s face⁠—they might have betrayed to him that she was thinking of the days when the box that he treasured so dearly played the air they were listening to now by the bedside of his dying child.

The stop had not been set, and the melody, after it had come to an end, began again. But now, after the first few bars, the notes succeeded one another more and more slowly⁠—the air grew less and less recognizable⁠—dropped at last to three notes, following each other at long intervals⁠—then ceased altogether. The chain that governed the action of the machinery had all run out; Mozart’s farewell song was silenced on a sudden, like a voice that had broken down.

The old man started, looked earnestly at his niece, and threw the leather case over the box as if he desired to shut out the sight of it. “The music stopped so,” he whispered to himself, in his own language, “when little Joseph died! Don’t go!” he added quickly, in English, almost before Sarah had time to feel surprised at the singular change that had taken place in his voice and manner. “Don’t go! Think better of it, and stop with me.”

“I have no choice, uncle, but to leave you⁠—indeed, indeed I have not! You don’t think me ungrateful? Comfort me at the last moment by telling me that!”

He pressed her hand in silence, and kissed her on both cheeks. “My heart is very heavy for you, Sarah,” he said. “The fear has come to me that it is not for your own good that you are going away from Uncle Joseph now!”

“I have no choice,” she sadly repeated⁠—“no choice but to leave you.”

“It is time, then, to get the parting over.” The cloud of doubt and fear that had altered his face, from the moment when the music came to its untimely end, seemed to darken, when he had said those words. He took up the basket which he had kept so carefully at his feet, and led the way out in silence.

They were barely in time; the driver was mounting to his seat when they got to the coach-office. “God preserve you, my child, and send you back to me soon, safe and well. Take the basket on your lap; there are some little things in it for your journey.” His voice faltered at the last word, and Sarah felt his lips pressed on her hand. The next instant the door was closed, and she saw him dimly through her tears standing among the idlers on the pavement, who were waiting to see the coach drive off.

By the time they were a little way out of the town she was able to dry her eyes and look into the basket. It contained a pot of jam and a horn spoon, a small inlaid work-box from the stock in the shop, a piece of foreign-looking cheese, a French roll, and a little paper packet of money, with the words “Don’t be angry” written on it, in Uncle Joseph’s hand. Sarah closed the cover of the basket again, and drew down her veil. She had not felt the sorrow of the parting in all its bitterness until that moment. Oh, how hard it was to be banished from the sheltering home which was offered to her by the one friend she had left in the world!

While that thought was in her mind, the old man was just closing the door of his lonely parlor. His eyes wandered to the tea-tray on the table and to Sarah’s empty cup, and he whispered to himself in his own language again⁠—

“The music stopped so when little Joseph died!”