"Good-bye, my boy! Remember that I've worked, and thought, and prayed,
for you alone,--and that I'd do more--I'd do _all_, if I only could!"

His look said, "I do not forget!" He sat already in the saddle, and was
straightening the folds of his heavy cloak, so that it might protect his
knees. The wind had arisen, and the damp mist was driving down the glen,
mixed with scattered drops of a coming rain-storm. As he rode slowly
away, Mary Potter lifted her eyes to the dense gray of the sky,
darkening from moment to moment, listened to the murmur of the wind over
the wooded hills opposite, and clasped her hands with the appealing
gesture which had now become habitual to her.

"Two days more!" she sighed, as she entered the house,--"two days more
of fear and prayer! Lord forgive me that I am so weak of faith--that I
make myself trouble where I ought to be humble and thankful!"

Gilbert rode slowly, because he feared the contents of his saddle-bags
would be disturbed by much jolting. Proof against wind and weather, he
was not troubled by the atmospheric signs, but rather experienced a
healthy glow and exhilaration of the blood as the mist grew thicker and
beat upon his face like the blown spray of a waterfall. By the time he
had reached the Carson farm, the sky contracted to a low, dark arch of
solid wet, in which there was no positive outline of cloud, and a dull,
universal roar, shorn of all windy sharpness, hummed over the land.

From the hill behind the farm-house, whence he could overlook the
bottom-lands of Redley Creek, and easily descry, on a clear day, the
yellow front of Dr. Deane's house in Kennett Square, he now beheld a dim
twilight chaos, wherein more and more of the distance was blotted out.