Mavis observed again what she had not seen for ages, the gloom on her husband’s face when he sat alone, or thought that he was alone.  The dull brooding look that spoiled his aspect at such times was like the shadow of a dark cloud on a field; but as in the past the shadow went rapidly, and she fancied she could chase it away as surely as if she had been the sunshine.  She would have been startled and pained if she could have seen his face now, as he rode from Manninglea after luncheon at the club.

It was a wet spring day, with dark clouds hanging low over the heath, a cold wind cheeping, soughing, sighing; and Dale’s face was darker and sadder than the day.  Before mounting his horse in the hotel yard at Manninglea he had gone to the station and bought The Times newspaper; now he drew the paper out of his pocket, and sheltering it with his rain cloak, read an advertisement on the front page.

The advertisement told him that a London hospital gratefully acknowledged the receipt of one hundred pounds, being the twenty-first donation from the same hand, and making two thousand and twenty pounds as the total received to date.  In accordance with the request of their anonymous benefactor, they inserted this notice, and they offered at the same time their heartfelt thanks.

Dale tore out the advertisement and threw away the rest of the paper.

To his mind, this money was the payment of a very old debt.  The amount of his first charitable donation sent nearly fifteen years ago, had been twenty pounds.  That, the most urgent part of the debt, represented the four bank-notes given to the wife by Mr. Barradine in London.  The other twenty instalments made up the amount of the legacy that came to her at his death.  Mavis had lent the money to her husband, had in due course received a similar sum of money from him, and she held it now safely invested; but, as Dale told himself, she did not in truth hold one penny of the dead man’s gifts.  All that she had now was the gift of him, Dale; and the money that soiled her hands in touching it, the money that had burned his brain, the filthy gold that had made him half-mad to think of, had gone to strangers whom neither of them had ever seen.  He had been slow about it; but, thank God, he had done at last what he wanted to do at the very beginning.

He folded the scrap of paper that was his receipt or quittance, put it in his breast pocket, and rode on at a foot-pace.  He was absolutely alone, not a soul in sight wherever he turned his eyes, not a beast, not a bird moving, the desolate brown heath and the sad gray sky alike empty of life; straight ahead, about a mile distant, lay the Cross Roads, the tavern, and the small hamlet of cottages, but as yet they were hidden by a rise of the intervening ground; only the fringe of cultivated land at the point where it met the barren waste indicated the work or proximity of mankind.  His face grew still darker as he approached these fields and saw the cluster