"Then why do you idle away your mornings down here?" asked the
engineer, wonderingly. "Can you afford to leave off working like
this?"

"No," replied the man, smiling to himself. "I suppose it's wrong
in me to do so; but all that will soon be made good."

"Is it possible that you're such a stupid ass as to hang round here
when there's no occasion for it?" roared the engineer, furiously.
"You ought to be shut up in a madhouse."

The man said nothing. He sat with his hands clasped round his
knees, quite unperturbed. A smile played about his mouth all the
while, and every second he seemed more and more confident of his
ultimate triumph.

The engineer shrugged his shoulders and walked away, but before he
was halfway down the hill he repented his harshness, and turned
back. The stern forbidding look which his strong features
habitually wore was now gone and he put out his hand to the man.

"I want to shake hands with you," he said. "Until now I had always
thought that I was the only one in this parish who knew what it was
to yearn; but now I see that I have found my master."


THE EMPRESS

The little girl of Ruffluck had been away fully thirteen months,