The days went by, and being added together one at a time, they made the
years. And the years grew into one decade, and lengthened out towards
another.

Aunt Annie was long dead, a white stone over her; but there was no stone
over Grace Allen--only a green mound where daisies grew.

Sir Gregory Jeffray came that way. He was a great law-officer of the
Crown, and first heir to the next vacant judgeship. This, however, he
was thinking of refusing because of the greatness of his private
practice.

He had come to shoot at the Barr, and his baggage was at Barmark
station. How strange it would be to see the old places again in the
gloom of a September evening!

Gregory still loved a new sensation. All was so long past--the
bitterness clean gone out of it. The old boathouse had fallen into other
hands, and railways had come to carry the traffic beyond the ferry.

As Sir Gregory Jeffray walked from the late train which set him down at
the station, he felt curiously at peace. The times of the Long Ago came
back not ungratefully to his mind. There had been much pleasure in them.
He even thought kindly of the girl with whom he had walked in the glory
of a forgotten summer along the hidden ways of the woods. Her last
letter, long since destroyed, was not disagreeable to him when he
thought of the secret which had been laid to rest so quietly in the pool
of the Black Water.

He came to the water's edge. He sent his voice, stronger now than of