last answer: "Dear Wife--This separation is bitter; but God has willed
it, and we must not forget that the probabilities are that we may pass
our lives apart." The next letter was from the English consul on the
Gaboon River, announcing the death of the devoted missionary.

Parson Quayle's household consisted only of himself and two maiden
daughters, but that was too much for the lively young Frenchwoman. While
her husband lived, she suffocated under the old-maid _regime_; and when
he was gone she made no more fight with destiny, but took some simple
ailment, and died suddenly.

A bare hillside frowned down on the place where Glory was born; but the
sun rose over it, and a beautiful river hugged its sides. A quarter of a
mile down the river there was a harbour, and beyond the harbour a bay,
with the ruins of an old castle standing out on an islet rock, and then
the broad sweep of the Irish Sea-the last in those latitudes to "parley
with the setting sun." The vicarage was called Glenfaba, and it was half
a mile outside the fishing town of Peel.

Glory was a little red-headed witch from the first, with an air of
general uncanniness in everything she did and said. Until after she was
six there was no believing a word she uttered. Her conversation was
bravely indifferent to considerations of truth or falsehood, fear or
favour, reward or punishment. The parson used to say, "I'm really afraid
the child has no moral conscience--she doesn't seem to know right from
wrong." This troubled his religion, but it tickled his humour, and it did
not disturb his love. "She's a perfect pagan--God bless her innocent
heart!"

She had more than a child's genius for make-believe. In her hunger for