"Agnes! Agnes!" he cried, with something of sternness and a little
shame.

"I have come--to you--again-Robert," she brokenly, but not abjectly,
said.

He came close to her and looked into her face, then into the face of the
child, with a sharp questioning. She did not flinch, but answered his
scrutiny clearly and proudly. Then, after a moment, she turned a
disappointed look upon me, as though to say that I, a stranger, had read
her aright at once, while this man held her afar in the cold courts of
his judgment ere he gave her any welcome or said a word of pity.

She sank back on the bench, and drew a hand with sorrowful slowness
across her brow. He saw a ring upon her finger. He took her hand and
said: "You are married, Agnes?"

"My husband is dead, and the sister of this poor one also," she replied;
and she fondled the child and raised her eyes to her brother's.

His face now showed compassion. He stooped and kissed her cheek. And it
seemed to me at that moment that she could not be gladder than I.

"Agnes," he said, "can you forgive me?"

"He was only a stock-rider," she murmured, as if to herself, "but he was
well-born. I loved him. You were angry. I went away with him in the
night . . . far away to the north. God was good--" Here she brushed
her lips tenderly across the curls of the child. "Then the drought came
and sickness fell and . . . death . . . and I was alone with my