sun shines there as it shines never in this bad country.' But I have no one to talk to me of Burgundy now."

Robert started, and turned to look at Carl, who was waiting impatiently to get away, and whose careworn face remained blank. The inspiration had come, but not to Carl. It was to Robert that the old Frenchwoman's words gave a clue which appeared likely to lead him to the discovery of the fugitives. If Hester and John Morley had left England, a conclusion which had become almost a positive conviction with him, what place would they be more likely to choose for concealment than this distant, unknown, yet to Hester, familiar town in Burgundy? If they had been in London, or even in Paris, argued Robert, they could not have failed to see the English papers; and if Carl's numerous advertisements had escaped them, they must have known from the absence of all news concerning any murder at Little Aston, that in some way or other John Morley's crime had missed the ordinary results. could come to no other conclusion than that they had fled to some region beyond the circulation of any news from England; and

He

the small insignificant town of Ecquemonville would be precisely such a place. It was there Hester would be found. This little town, hidden among the vineyards of Burgundy, busy with its own small interests, with no frequent communication with the rest of the world, and quickly adopting a stranger into its own narrow circle,—Hester must be there. The old selfishness, a selfishness which he had been victoriously trampling under his feet for the last three months, rose up again strong and mighty. He would find Hester himself, saying nothing to Carl of this new, faint hope. Hester should owe to him all the help and consolation she could receive in her peculiar position of desolation and distress.

At Grant's door he stopped, declining to go in; for already his heart burned with a passionate desire to be upon the road, at the end of which he expected to find Hester. There was not even a vague hope within him that he should ever win her. He knew that upon the path he had to travel through life there was a point where the cross stood, upon which must be crucified his lost love, his lost hope. But he could not relinquish the sweetness of finding

Hester himself alone; it might be the last sweetness and joy he should taste in all his intercourse with her. His love for her, deepened and purified by all these later sorrows, must never seek satisfaction,-except the satisfaction to which he had always been a stranger: that of surrendering itself, and consenting to be sacrificed to the happiness of the beloved one. But it was coming gradually to this in Robert's spirit; and with set face and heart he travelled towards the threatening cross, only asking to gather one little flower at its foot.

"I am going away for a day or two, Carl," he said, pressing his hand convulsively; "I shall be back soon. Take care of my little Hetty. She will not miss me now you are here."

He hurried home and wrote a short note to his father, saying that he was going away upon business, for he did not wish to subject himself to any questioning; and with very little other preparation he set out by the first train on his journey to Burgundy.

CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE SUNSHINE.

JOHN MORLEY was in the condition of a man who has been dwelling underground for so long a period that he has almost forgotten the glory of the upper world. For him, in his gloomy and abandoned home, there had been no sweet influences of sunshine and breeze, no change of season, no opening of leaf-buds, no soft starry fall of snow. He had obstinately closed his senses to all the healing agencies of nature; and with almost greater obstinacy he had steeled himself against the tender energy of religion. He had been voluntarily sojourning in "a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness."

Perhaps the first thing necessary for him was to reawaken his sensibility towards outer influences. Grant had from the first recognised this necessity, and had urged him to take a long walk daily in the beautiful neighbourhood surrounding Little Aston. But John Morley

had not the moral courage and strength to break out of the dungeon where he was kept by Giant Despair. It was needful that the angels should lay hold upon him and bring him forth, and set him without the gates.

He

He was free then at last. He had come up from the depths. The wonderful sunshine of Burgundy dazzled him, but he felt its warmth and its light penetrate to the very core of his heart. The great fountain of life sent electric currents through all his numbed veins. could not think at first,—he was too bewildered. It was enough to stand by and look on with newly-opened eyes at the moving panorama surrounding him. Everything was new to him, and removed him by its novelty from the sorrowful memories of his old life. He scarcely spent an hour indoors from early in the morning until the last bell rung at ten o'clock, when all the inhabitants of Ecquemonville thought it the right thing to retire peacefully into their own chambers. When he was weary of gazing up into the marvellous blue of the sky, he turned his rapt attention to the vineyards, where the grapes were deepening every day into a more purple tint. In the boulevards