some things may be pardoned, I think, in a case like mine.'

'I pardon them.'

'I can teach her, of course, and a year or so among cultivated people
will work wonders; I think I shall take her abroad, first. How soon
did you say we could go?'

'The ice is moving. There will be vessels through the straits in two
or three weeks,' replied Fog. His voice shook. Waring looked up; the
old man was weeping. 'Forgive me,' he said brokenly, 'but the little
girl is very dear to me.'

The younger man was touched. 'She shall be as dear to me as she has
been to you,' he said; 'do not fear. My love is proved by the very
struggle I have made against it. I venture to say no man ever fought
harder against himself than I have in this old castle of yours. I kept
that Titian picture as a countercharm. It resembles a woman who, at a
word, will give me herself and her fortune,--a woman high in the
cultivated circles of cities both here and abroad, beautiful,
accomplished, a queen in her little sphere. But all was useless. That
long night in the snow, when I crawled backwards and forwards to keep
myself from freezing, it came to me with power that the whole of earth
and all its gifts compared not with this love. Old man, she will be
happy with me.'

'I know it.'

'Did you foresee this end?' asked Waring after a while, watching, as
he spoke, the expression of the face before him. He could not rid