"You have been far away, Francis; you have come back home. I waited, and
prayed, and worked with you, and was patient. . . . It is very strange,"
she continued. "In all these twelve years you cannot remember our past,
though you remembered about this place--the one thing, as if God had made
it so--and now you cannot remember those twelve years."

"Tell me now of the twelve years," he urged.

"It was the same from day to day. When we came from the mountain, we
brought with us the implements of the forge upon a horse. Now and again
as we travelled we cut our way through the heavy woods. You were changed
for the better then; a dreadful trouble seemed to have gone from your
face. There was a strong kind of peace in the valley, and there were so
many birds and animals, and the smell of the trees was so fine, that we
were not lonely, neither you nor I."

She paused, thinking, her eyes looking out to where the Evening Star was
sailing slowly out of the wooded horizon, his look on her. In the pause
the wolf-dog raised its big, sleepy eyes at them, then plunged its head
into its paws, its wildness undisturbed by their presence.

Presently the wife continued: "At last we reached here, and here we have
lived, where no human being, save one, has ever been. We put up the
forge, and in a little hill not far away we found coal for it. The days
went on. It was always summer, though there came at times a sharp frost,
and covered the ground with a coverlet of white. But the birds were
always with us, and the beasts were our friends. I learned to love even
the shrill cry of the reed hens, and the soft tap-tap of the wood-pecker
is the sweetest music to my ear after the song of the anvil. How often