“Caroline Darrah,” demanded the major, “do you mean to tell me that there is no certainty of anybody’s having got a result from a foray of the magnitude of that last night?  Didn’t you even see a possum?”

“No, I didn’t; but I know they caught some—­David said so,” answered Caroline in a reassuring voice.

“Caroline,” again demanded the major relentlessly, having already had his suspicions aroused by her confusion and blushes, “where were you when David Kildare caught those beasts that you didn’t see one?”

“I was—­was lost,” she answered, and it surprised him that she didn’t put one rosy finger-tip into her mouth, so very young was her further confusion.

“Alone?” The major made his demand without mercy.

“No, sir, with Mr. Sevier—­why, aren’t you going to have breakfast, Major, it is almost church time?” and Caroline rallied her domestic dignity to her support as she escaped toward Temple’s domain.

And the flush of joy that had flamed in her cheeks had lighted a glow in the major’s weather-tanned old face and his eyes fairly snapped with light.  Could it be that the boy had reached out for his atonement?  Could it be—­he heard the front door close as the first church bell struck a deep note and at that moment Jeff announced his breakfast as ready in a voice of the deepest exhaustion.

And when Caroline emerged from the still darkened house into the crisp air she found Andrew Sevier standing on the front steps waiting to walk into church with her.

Her smile of shy joy as she held out her hand to him warmed his somber eyes for the moment.

“They are all asleep,” she whispered as if even from the street there was danger of awakening the tired hunting party.  “The major is keeping it quiet for them.”

“And you ought to be asleep, too,” he answered as they started off at a brisk pace down the avenue.

“You weren’t,” she laughed up at him, and then dropped her eyes shyly.  “I always go to church,” she added demurely.

“And I suppose I counted on your habit,” he said, utterly unable to control the tenderness in voice or glance.

“I wanted you to go with me to-day—­I hoped you would though you never have,” she answered him with a divine seriousness in her lifted eyes.  “They are all coming to dinner and then you’ll go to the office, so I hoped about this morning.”  She was utterly lovely in her gentleness and a strange peace fell into the troubled heart of the man at her side.

And it followed him into the dim church and made the hour he sat at her side one of holy healing.  Once as they knelt together during the service she slipped her gloved hand into his for an instant and from its warmth there flowed a strength of which he stood in dire need and from which he drew courage to go on for the few days remaining before his exile.  Just to protect her, he prayed, and leave her unhurt, and he failed to see that the humility and blindness of a great love were leading him into the perpetration of a great cruelty, to the undoing of them both.