what it was. We were all silent from surprise
for about a minute. Then Rachel rose
trembling.

"Sit still my love," said Arthur; " it is only
a mad gipsy girl." And Jane was not unlike a
gipsy.

"Come, come!" cried Jane, stamping her foot
with impatience, not vouchsafing even a look at
Arthur. " Come, or you will be too late; there
is not a moment to lose."

I think Mrs. Hill's voice piped shrill exclamations
at my ear, but I remember nothing that
she said. Mr. Hill, who knew Jane's appearance,
was speechless. Arthur had risen, and
stood by Rachel, looking amazedly from her to
Jane, and from Jane to her. Rachel turned on
him a grievous look which I have never
forgotten, and pushed him from her with both her
hands back into the room. Then she glanced at
me with a mute entreaty, and I stepped with
her out of the window, and we went across the
lawn, and through the trees, and away along all
the old tracks to the farm. Following Jane,
who, knowing we were behind her, flew like the
wind, without once looking back. We soon
lost her, for we often paused to pant and lean
against one another for a moment's respite in
this strange remarkable race. We did not
speak, but I looked at Rachel, and she was
like a poor lily soiled and crushed by the storm,
with her white dress trailing through the dust,
and her satin shoes torn on her feet. But that
was nothing. We reached the farm-house.
There was some one moving to meet white
dishevelled, quivering Rachel. There was a
cry, smothered at once in the awful hush of
the place, and Rachel fell, clasping her mother's
knees. I left them alone. What sobbings and
whisperings, confession and forgiveness
followed, God and his angels heard.

I went blindly into the hall, knowing nothing
of what I did. I met John coming to me. I
had no words. I stretched out my hands to
him. He took them, took me in his arms, and
that was our reconciliation.

That night we were all present at a death-
bed. It was only bit by bit that I learned the
story of how the dying man came to be there.
The poor erring father, reduced to want, and
smitten by disease, had crept back in the
disguise of a beggar to ask the charity of his
deserted wife and children, and to breathe his
last sigh among loving forgiving hearts. It was
Jane, stern Jane, who had denounced him so
cruelly, nursed such bitter resentment against
him; it was Jane, who had happened, of a
summer evening in her mother's absence, to
open the door to his knock, had taken him into
her arms and into her heart, had nursed him,
caressed him, watched and prayed with him.

So that was the end of poor Jane's hardness of
heart. It was all washed away in tears at her
father's death-bed. The last trace of it vanished
at sight of Rachel's remorse.

My dear Mrs. Hollingford, my sweet old
mother! These two shocks well nigh caused
her death; but when she had nobly weathered
the storm she found a daughter whom she had
mourned as lost, living and breathing and loving
in her arms, and her brave heart accepted much
comfort.

And what about those three kind souls whom
we left in such sudden consternation by the
open window in the drawing-room at the hall?
Why, of course, they came to inquire into the
mystery. I was the one who had to tell them
Rachel's story, as kindly and delicately as I
might. You will be glad, my children, to know
that they made very little of their darling's
fault. Mr. Hill was somewhat grave over the
matter, but Mrs. Hill would not allow a word
of blame to be uttered against her pet. She
urged, she invented a hundred excuses; good,
kind soul. As for Arthur Noble, he readily
discerned love for himself as the cause of her
unwilling desertion of others. His nature was
large enough to appreciate the worth of my John
and his mother. As he had been willing, he
said, to wed Rachel friendless, so was he now
more willing to wed Rachel with friends whom
he could love. So the beloved culprit was
tried and acquitted, and after many days had
passed, and the poor father had been laid in the
earth, a chastened Rachel was coaxed back to
her lover's side, and, I have no doubt, told him
her own story in her own way.

But old Mr. Hill was, to my mind, the most
sensible of them all, who said to his wife:
"They may say what they please, sweetheart!
but, to my thinking, the lad, John, is by far the
flower of the Hollingford flock!" And the fine
old gentleman proved his good-will after years,
had passed that were then to come. When
called upon to follow his wife, who died before
him, he bequeathed the Hillsbro' estate to my
husband.

Rachel (he always called her Rachel) and
Arthur went to live in Paris. Jane married
a great doctor of learning, and found her home
in London; and Mopsie made a sweet little
wife for a country squire, and stayed among the
roses and milk-pans.

For John and me, our home was the farm,
till fortune promoted us to the hall. Thither
the dear mother accompanied us, and there she
died in my arms. There, also, at last, my
husband. And now, my darlings, your father, my
son, is the owner of Hillsbro', and the hall is
your own happy home.

And the old woman has returned to the farm.