and to your children,’ afterwards clinching the words by saying:  ’Thaa sees, Miriam, thaas noan in it, for thaa’s no childer’; and how, when she gently protested, ’But is not the promise to all that are afar off?’ the elect sister of the church and daughter of God destroyed her one ray of hope by saying:  ’Yi! but only to as mony as the Lord aar God shall co.’  And Matt—­poor Matt—­across whom the cold shadow had so long lain, and which, despite his love of her, would creep now and again like a cloud over the sunshine of his face—­Matt, too, would be redeemed from his long disappointment, and renewed in strength as he saw a purpose in his life’s struggle, even the welfare of his posterity.  These thoughts, and many others, all passed through Miriam’s mind as she stood looking out from the mound upon the sundown moors.

Dreaming thus, she was startled by a well-known voice; and looking in the direction whence the sound came, she saw her husband in the distance beckoning her to meet him.  Nor did she wait for his further eager gesticulations, but at once, with fleet foot, descended the slope, towards the path by which he was approaching.

Ere she reached him, however, she realized as never before the secret she was about to confide, and for the first time in her life became self-conscious.  How could she meet Matt, and how could she tell him?  In a moment her naturalness and girlish buoyancy forsook her.  She was lost in a distrait mood.  Joy changed to shyness; a hot flush, not of shame, but of restraint, mounted her cheeks.  Then she slackened her pace, and for a moment wished that Matt could know all apart from her confession.

To how many of nervous temperament is self-consciousness the bane of existence—­while the more such try to master it, the more unnatural they become!  It separates souls, begetting an aloofness which, misunderstood, ends in mistrust and alienation; and it lies at the root of too many of the fatal misconceptions of life.  There are loving hearts that would pay any price to be freed from the self-enfolding toils that wrap them in these crisis hours.  And so would Miriam’s, for she felt herself shrink within herself at the approach of Matt.  She knew nothing of mental moods, never having heard of them, nor being able to account for, or analyze, them.  All she knew, poor girl, was that for the first time in her life she was not herself; and as she responded to Matt’s warm greeting, she felt she was not the wife, nor the woman, who but a few weeks ago had so affectionately farewelled him, and who but a few moments ago so longed for his return.

Nor was Matt unconscious of this change, for as soon as the greeting was over he said, with tones of anxiety in his voice: 

‘What ails thee, my lass?’

‘Who sez as onnythin’ ails me?’ was her reply, but in a tone of such forced merriment that Matt only grew the more concerned.

‘Who sez as onnything ails thee?’ cried he.  ’Why those bonny een o’ thine—­an’ they ne’er tell lies.’