“Thank God I see you alive again.  Thank God!” he said with intense feeling, as he took her hand and shook it warmly.  “The best news that ever made my heart glad, Chris.”

She welcomed him, and he, looking into her eyes, saw new knowledge there, a shadow of sobriety, less of the old dance and sparkle.  But he remembered the little tremulous updrawing of her lip when a smile was born, and her voice rang fuller and sweeter than any music he had ever heard since last she spoke to him.  A smile of welcome she gave him, indeed, and a pressure of his hand that sent magic messages with it to the very core of him.  He felt his blood leap and over his glasses came a dimness.

“I was gwaine to write first moment I heard ‘e was home.  An’ I wish I had, for I caan’t tell ’e what I feel.  To think of ‘e searchin’ the wide world for such a good-for-nought!  I thank you for your generous gudeness, Martin.  I’ll never forget it—­never.  But I wasn’t worth no such care.”

“Not worth it!  It proved the greatest, bitterest grief of all my life—­but one—­that I couldn’t find you.  We grew by cruel stages to think—­to think you were dead.  The agony of that for us!  But, thank God, it was not so.  All at least is well with you now?”

“All ban’t never well with men an’ women.  But I’m more fortunate than I deserve to be, and can make myself of use.  I’ve lived a score of years since we met.  An I’ve comed back to find’t is a difficult world for those I love best, unfortunately.”

Thus, in somewhat disjointed fashion, Chris made answer.

“Sit a while and speak to me,” replied Martin.  “The laddie can play about.  Look at him marching along with that great branch of king fern over his shoulder!”

“’T is an elfin cheel some ways.  Wonnerful eyes he’ve got.  They burn me if I look at’em close,” said Chris. She regarded Timothy without sentiment and her eyes were bright and hard.

“I hope he will turn out well.  Will spoke of him the other day.  He is very fond of the child.  It is singularly like him, too—­a sort of little pocket edition of him.”

“So I’ve heard others say.  Caan’t see it at all myself.  Look at the eyes of un.”

“Will believes the boy has got very unusual intelligence and may go far.”

“May go so far as the workhouse,” she answered, with a laugh.  Then, observing that her reply pained Martin, Chris snatched up small Tim as he passed by and pressed him to her breast and kissed him.

“You like him better than you think, Chris—­poor little motherless thing.”

“Perhaps I do.  I wonder if his mother ever looks hungry towards Newtake when she passes by?”

“Perhaps others took him and told the mother that he was dead.”

“She’s dead herself more like.  Else the thing wouldn’t have falled out.”

There was a pause, then Martin talked of various matters.  But he could not fight for long against the desire of his heart and presently plunged, as he had done five years before, into a proposal.