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She paused, as she had to do several times during the recital, through weariness or pain; but, after a moment, proceeded. “One day, one beautiful day, when the flowers were like love to the eye, and the larks singin’ overhead, and my thoughts goin’ with them as they swam until they were lost in the sky, and every one of them a prayer for the lad livin’ yet, as I hoped, somewhere in God’s universe–there rode a gentleman down Farcalladen Rise. He stopped me as I walked, and said a kind good-day to me; and I knew when I looked into his face that he had word for me–the whisperin’ of some angel, I suppose, and I said to him as though he had asked me for it, ‘My name is Mary Callen, sir.’

“At that he started, and the colour came quick to his face; and he said: ‘I am Sir Duke Lawless. I come to look for Mary Callen’s grave. Is there a Mary Callen dead, and a Mary Callen livin’? and did both of them love a man that went from Farcalladen Rise one wild night long ago?’

“‘There’s but one Mary Callen,’ said I, ‘but the heart of me is dead, until I hear news that brings it to life again?’

“‘And no man calls you wife?’ he asked.

“‘No man, Sir Duke Lawless,’ answered I. ‘And no man ever could, save him that used to write me of you from the heart of Australia; only there was no Sir to your name then.’

“‘I’ve come to that since,’ said he.

“‘Oh, tell me,’ I cried, with a quiverin’ at my heart, ‘tell me, is he livin’?’

“And he replied: ‘I left him in the Pipi Valley of the Rocky Mountains a year ago.’

“‘A year ago!’ said I, sadly.

“‘I’m ashamed that I’ve been so long in comin’ here,’ replied he; ‘but, of course, he didn’t know that you were alive, and I had been parted from a lady for years–a lover’s quarrel–and I had to choose between courtin’ her again and marryin’ her, or comin’ to Farcalladen Rise at once. Well, I went to the altar first.’

“‘Oh, sir, you’ve come with the speed of the wind, for now that I’ve news of him, it is only yesterday that he went away, not years agone. But tell me, does he ever think of me?’ I questioned.

“‘He thinks of you,’ he said, ‘as one for whom the masses for the dead are spoken; but while I knew him, first and last, the memory of you was with him.’

“With that he got off his horse, and said: ‘I’ll walk with you to his father’s home.’

“‘You’ll not do that,’ I replied; ‘for it’s level with the ground. God punish them that did it! And they’re lyin’ in the glen by the stream that he loved and galloped over many a time.’

“‘They are dead–they are dead, then,’ said he, with his bridle swung loose on his arm and his hat off reverently.

“‘Gone home to Heaven together,’ said I, ‘one day and one hour, and a prayer on their lips for the lad; and I closin’ their eyes at the last. And before they went they made me sit by them and sing a song that’s common here with us; for manny and manny of the strength and pride of Farcalladen Rise have sailed the wide seas north and south, and otherwhere, and comin’ back maybe and maybe not.’

“‘Hark,’ he said, very gravely, ‘and I’ll tell you what it is, for I’ve heard him sing it, I know, in the worst days and the best days that ever we had, when luck was wicked and big against us and we starvin’ on the wallaby track; or when we found the turn in the lane to brighter days.’

“And then with me lookin’ at him full in the eyes, gentleman though he was,–for comrade he had been with the man I loved,–he said to me there, so finely and kindly, it ought to have brought the dead back from their graves to hear, these words: