CHAPTER LXIV.

JUDITH'S RETURN.

The poor father, whom Judith Hart had so cruelly abandoned, sat alone in the old house, patient in his broken-heartedness and more poverty-stricken than ever. He had no neighbors near enough to drop in upon his solitude, and all wish for reading had left him, with the thankless girl he had worshipped.

When he came home and found himself alone in the saddest of all sad hours, that in which a day passes into eternity with the sun, his desolation was complete. It was something, when the cow he had petted into loving tameness would come to the garden wall, and look at him with her soft intelligent eyes, as if she knew of his sorrow and longed to share it with him. Sometimes he would go out and talk to her as if she possessed human sensibility--gather grass and wild flowers, and caress the animal's neck as she licked them from his hands.

He was sitting thus lonely at the window between twilight and dark, when the figure of a woman came walking down the lane, that made the almost dead pulses of his heart stir rapidly. It was so like Judith, the free movement, the very poise of her head. The resemblance almost made him cry out. But, no, he had been mistaken before. The dusk was gathering. It must be some neighboring woman come to chat a moment with him. Some of the old friends were kind enough for that now and then when Judith was at home.

No, no--it was Judith. He could see her face now. She was smiling, and waved one hand; in the other she carried a bundle which did not trouble her with its weight, she was so young and strong--Judith, his daughter, come back again.

The old man got up from the window and went into the porch, holding out his arms.

"Judith! Judith! Oh, my child! my child!" She came up with breathless speed, flung her bundle down on the porch, and clasped the old man in her arms.

"So you have missed me, father? Take that and that for loving me so."

She kissed his face, and shook both his hands with emphasis; then turned about, crossed the yard and patted the cow on its forehead.

"There, now, that I have got all the welcome there is for me, let's go in and strike a light. How dark you are!"

Directly the girl had a match flaring and a candle lighted.

"There," she said, "I will bring another bowl and we will have supper; there is porridge enough for two."

There was enough for two, though one had the greatest portion, for joy took away the old man's appetite. It was enough for him that he could sit there with a spoon in his hand, gazing at her. There was not much conversation during this meal. The timid old man asked few questions, and Judith only said that she had been in a servant's place away up the railroad, and had brought home her wages, or most of them.

The girl had every penny that she had earned in her bosom, and gave it to the old man that night. She had walked all the way from "Norston's Rest," that the little sum might be worth giving. So the old man was happy that night, and after Judith had carried her bundle, in which was the red garment Storms had given her, up-stairs, he was on his knees by the unmade bed, in his little room, with a prayer of humble thanksgiving on his lips, and tears streaming down his face like rain.

The next day Judith took up her household work with unusual energy. It was her only resource from the excitement of hopes and fears that possessed her. The love that had tempted her from home was absorbing as ever; but doubts and fears strong as the love tormented her continually. Even at the last moment she had hesitated to leave the neighborhood of "Norston's Rest." There had been something in Storms' manner that made her distrust him.

But she would wait patiently. That was her promise. In three days he had pledged himself to see her. If he failed, if he was mocking her, why, then--

Judith turned away from the subject here. That which might follow was more than she dared think of.

I have said that the girl was not all evil--indeed what human being is? She loved this man Storms, with all the passion of an ardent, ill-regulated nature. Heedless, selfish, nay, to a certain extent, wicked, she might be; but deliberate cruelty of action was repulsive to her--that of speech had its origin in the jealousy which tormented her more than any one else.

Judith understood well enough that the paper she had given to Storms might cause great trouble to Sir Noel Hurst, but her ideas of the rights of property were very crude, and she could see no reason why that should not be used to win a portion of the baronet's great wealth, for the benefit of her lover. "Why should one man be so enormously rich without labor," she reasoned, "and another win the bare necessities of life by incessant toil?" Judith had gathered these ideas from her lover, and dwelt upon them in extenuation of her fault, when she joined him in a conspiracy to wring wealth from the proud old man at "Norston's Rest."

After her return home, the destitution of her father gave a new impulse to this levelling idea. She began to look on him as a victim to the injustice of society, and persuaded herself that in the advancement of her lover's projects she would lift him out of this miserable existence.

It was with difficulty that Judith kept silent, on this subject. She longed to cheer and astonish the old man by the brilliancy of her projects, but Storms had forbidden this, and she dared not disobey him.

On the third day, this hoping and longing became greatly intensified. It seemed to her as if each hour had lengthened into a year. She was constantly examining the face of that old brass clock, and reviling it in her heart because the hands went round so slowly.

When her father came in, his presence was more than she could bear. Forced to energetic action by her own unrest, she had prepared his supper early and after that sent him down to the village, that he might not detect the fever of her impatience.

Twice she went down to the orchard wall and came back, disappointed that no one was in sight; though she knew that Storms would not be there until his approach could be covered by the evening shadows.

At last she sat down by a window that looked toward the orchard, resolved to wait. Thus she watched the sunset, while its crimson melted into purple, through which the stars began to shine. A strange, keen light was in her face, and her eyes had the glitter of diamonds when the first star came out. Then, and not till then, she lighted a lamp.

All was still in the house. Far back in the room the lamp was turned down, shedding a faint light, such as a clouded moon might throw, around the table on which it stood, but leaving those pleasant shadows we love in a summer's night everywhere else. Storms would not enter the orchard until he had seen that light. It was the old signal that they both understood.

Scarcely had this faint illumination brightened the room, when Judith saw something flutter above the wall, as if a great bird had settled there and was ready to fly again. She leaped to her feet, snatched up a shawl that had been laid across a chair in readiness, and hurried through the back door, folding the drapery around her as she went.