His body lay back upon the grey lifeless branch, wrapped in the ragged,
soiled garment that Markham had put upon him; the silence of night came
again over the water and the grey dead trees, and nature went on
steadily and quietly with her work of healing.




CHAPTER XI.


When Toyner had left Fentown to go and rescue Markham, Ann had stood a
good way off upon the dark shore just to satisfy herself that he had got
into the boat and rowed down the river. This was not an indication that
she doubted him. She followed him unseen because she felt that night
that there were elements in his conduct which she did not in the least
understand. When he was gone, she went back to fulfil her part of the
contract, and she had a strength of purpose in fulfilling it which did
not belong mainly to the obligation of her promise. Something in his
look when he had come in this evening, in his glance as he bade her
farewell, made her eager to fulfil it.

All night, asleep or awake, she was more or less haunted with this new
feeling for Toyner--a feeling which did not in her mind resemble love or
liking, which would have been perhaps best translated by the word
"reverence," but that was not a word in Ann's vocabulary, not even an
idea in her mental horizon.

Our greatest gains begin to be a fact in the soul before we have any
mental conception of them!