He had not counted the
hours until this day, to be balked now by a little loss of blood.
The moon was nearly down before he reached the Cloughton hills:
he turned there into a narrow path which he remembered well. Now
and then he saw the mark of a little shoe in the snow,--looking
down at it with a hot panting in his veins, and a strange flash
in his eye, as he walked on steadily.
There was a turn in the path at the top of the hill, a sunken
wall, with a broad stone from which the wind had blown the snow.
This was the place. He sat down on the stone, resting. Just
there she had stood, clutching her little fingers behind her,
when he came up and threw back her hood to look in her face: how
pale and worn it was, even then! He had not looked at her
to-night: he would not, if he had been dying, with those men
standing there. He stood alone in the world with this little
Margret. How those men had carped, and criticised her, chattered
of the duties of her soul! Why, it was his, it was his own,
softer and fresher. There was not a glance with which they
followed the weak little body in its poor dress that he had not
seen, and savagely resented. They measured her strength? counted
how long the bones and blood would last in their House of Refuge?
There was not a morsel of her flesh that was not pure and holy in
his eyes. His Margret? He chafed with an intolerable fever to
make her his, but for one instant, as she had been once. Now,
when it was too late.
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