After the storm there was a calm.

Margaret lay on the settle in the farm kitchen recovering slowly from a sharp attack of marsh fever, and declaring in apparent jest, that had more than a substratum of truth, that she was in no hurry to get well.

"Some people hate being waited on and made a fuss over," she said; "but I really like it; I like it when Tom brings me books, and Mr. Thorpe flowers, and Cousin Tremnell tats lace caps for me. You are all so nice when I am ill, that I don't see why I should give up being an invalid. Why should I sit on a bench and spread my own bread and dripping, when some one else will make toast for me and bring it over here? I am not at all sure that I'll even condescend to put it into my own mouth! You must cut it into three-cornered pieces, or I won't look at it!"

And in the general laugh over her pretended airs, only one of her hearers guessed how often the joke, that had become a family joke, about liking to be waited on, hid real weariness and exhaustion.

She could hardly have found a shorter cut to the favour of these strange kinsfolk. They all united in petting her now that she was really ill.

Mrs. Tremnell certainly liked her better for her delicacy. Meg always privately believed that the good woman thought ill-health ladylike and more befitting her birth. Tom and her father-in-law could never do enough for her.

She was, like her father, a charming patient, ready with prettiest thanks for any service, and never complaining. Not one of them but would have been sorry to miss the very feminine element she had brought into that rather rough household.

"A young woman do make it more interestin', if only 'cause you can never count for sartain on what she'll say next," Tom remarked; and the whole household had a habit of bringing any piece of news, from the birth of a calf to the last town gossip, to Meg's settle.

The 'little lady' saw all life, both her own and other people's, more vividly and picturesquely than they did; and her sympathy was genuine and quick.

"If ye live here always, I believe ye'll become a sort o' little wise woman to all the foalk hereabouts," her father-in-law said to her one day. But Meg shook her head. She was doing her best to lie on the bed she had made for herself; but she did not care to look forward.

She was recovering morally as well as physically; but she couldn't go too fast.

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" is a piece of wisdom that we recognise at last, when we are tired out with the treble burden of to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow.

Barnabas worked on the farm through that August and the first half of September, and Tom was glad enough to have him.

The preacher had a wonderful faculty for turning his hands to anything; and this was, perhaps, a counter-balance to his incapacity for and dislike of "book-larning".

He was in request as veterinary surgeon and bone-setter; and Meg used to wonder that his strong clever fingers should have so delicate a touch.

She learned to depend on him herself, insensibly, in a way that she would once hardly have thought possible.

Barnabas was a born nurse, and could lift her into an easier position and slip her pillows into the right angle as no one else could.

Mrs. Tremnell had an aimless manner of fluttering about on tip-toe in a sick-room,—a habit which set Meg's nerves on edge, and which it taxed all her self-command to endure without signs of impatience; but the preacher's heavy tread never jarred on her. He always knew exactly what he meant to do in small as well as in big things; and both his decision and his strength were restful.

Possibly, if she had owed him less, she would have drawn near to loving him.

She had fancied when first taken ill that she was going to die.

The shivering and burning, which left her daily weaker, which wearied and exhausted her, would, she suspected, very effectually solve all the difficulties that surrounded Barnabas and herself. But, after all, her youth asserted itself. A spell of sharp, fresh weather seemed to give her new life; the attacks of fever became shorter; and, very much to her own surprise, she recognised that she was—albeit painfully and with many relapses—getting better!

She had been kept to the house for weeks; but there was no doubt as to her convalescence, when, on one fine afternoon in September, Barnabas carried her into the fields, where she lay under a rick watching the men at work, the soft pink of returning health in her cheeks, her eyes soft with pleasure at the wonder of summer growth and sweetness.

Meg had not much wished to live; but, after all, the world was beautiful!

As she sat leaning against the rick, watching the in-gathering of the scanty crop, listening to the rough voices a little mellowed by distance, the preacher's wife knew that both place and people had now a warm corner in her heart.

Her gaze wandered past the low boundary fence, far away over the flats. How often she had run out of the house and down to the field to look at that view!

She had thought that she should not see it again; and, even now, while sitting there, a dreamy presentiment, that she could not shake off, came over her.

She felt as if she had got to the bottom of a page,—a page on which such strange things had been written, both good and bad. Efforts, desperate at times, to adapt herself to circumstances, failures sudden and overwhelming, courage lost—and found again.

"They have been very good to the stranger within their gates," she said to herself. "I wish I could show them how grateful I am now! I wish I were a saint to call down blessings on their harvest!"

And she wished it with that fervour which one cannot help hoping is not entirely wasted, even in the entire absence of saintship.

She was so full of her own thoughts that she did not hear steps coming over the stubble behind her.

George Sauls had been up to the house and found the door set wide open, and every one out; then, with a shrug of his shoulders at the primitive confidence that still reigned in these parts, had gone on to the hay-field, where he descried Mrs. Thorpe sitting under the rick.

He stood behind her now without speaking. He was shocked to see how ill she looked. He had always felt that Meg's beauty was of too spiritual a kind; now, her complexion was more transparent than usual, and the intent expression in her eyes made her look more spirit-like than ever.

George felt his hatred of her husband leap up like a flame; it was dangerously hot. She turned round and saw him.

"Ah, I beg your pardon!" he cried. "I have frightened you! I ought not to have appeared on the scene with such startling effect. I am a fool, Mrs. Thorpe" ("and a greater fool than you guess," he added inwardly), "and you? You have been ill?"

"I am sure that you bring me news. Tell me quickly," said Meg.

"I come from Mr. Deane; he has sent for you," answered George concisely.

He put her father's note into her hand, and turned his back on her, staring stolidly in front of him.

"Has he told her he is dying, or has he left that pleasing piece of intelligence for me to break to her?" he questioned.

What a remarkably ugly view it was! He wondered whether the preacher was among the men down there, or confined himself to preaching and left working to the sinners. What should he do if Mrs. Thorpe cried?

"Mr. Sauls!" said Meg; and he turned round and met her glance. She was quivering with happiness. Her eyes were misty with tears, but her joy shone through them. He had never seen any face that expressed joy so vividly as hers.

"No; he has not told her,—I can't," George decided hastily. He did not often fail in moral courage, and over-sensitiveness was not among his faults; but this woman always brought out a side of his character that was exceedingly unfamiliar to himself.

"I am so very, very glad that he will see me!" she cried. "You can't guess what it is to have a word from him again. I don't know how to thank you enough for bringing it." She looked again at the precious slip of paper in her hand, and a fresh thought struck her.

"My father says, 'I would have seen you before if I had known'. Was it you who found out that I tried to see him? and did you tell him so?—Yes? Oh, you have been a very good"—"friend" was on the tip of her tongue, but she suddenly remembered his odd disclaimer of friendship—"have been very kind to me; though I wonder" (thoughtfully) "that Mrs. Russelthorpe let you tell him."

"She was a little disinclined to allow an interview at first," said George smiling; "but—but she felt the force of my arguments."

"You must be very clever at persuading people."

"I was very persuasive," he said drily.

The remembrance of his "persuasion" amused him somewhat; but he did not care about giving Meg the details of that scene.

"Look here, Mrs. Thorpe; I've brought you something else which you won't like quite so much as that scrap of paper; but which I fancied you might be pleased to have, for I remembered that you once told me that you valued it." And he held out her locket.

"Why, it has come back to me again!" cried Meg. "The first time it was stolen; and Barnabas moved to repentance the poor girl who took it; but this time, I sold it of my own free will, and——"

"And I moved no one to repentance," said George. "I can't compete with the preacher; I paid over the counter. His was the more excellent way!"

Meg drew back a step. Whenever she felt most kindly to Mr. Sauls something in his tone jarred on her. It had been so in her girlhood; it was so now.

"There is no question of competition," she said. "Shall we try to find Barnabas? Oh! there he is."

He was coming towards them across the field; but he did not at first see Mr. Sauls, who was in the shadow.

George would have preferred to meet Meg's husband when Meg was not by; but he stood his ground. He was not going to be driven away by the fellow, much as he disliked him.

He had often said to himself that it was more than possible that the canting humbug ill-treated the woman he had stolen. Such a belief would justify any amount of hatred; but he knew it to be untenable when he saw the expression of the preacher's eyes as they turned to Meg.

He ought, logically, to have hated the preacher less in consequence; but, on the contrary, a tingling sensation assailed his foot; he wanted to kick the man with a longing the fierceness of which surprised himself. Mr. Sauls was a highly sophisticated product of a rather artificial age; but certain primitive instincts have an astonishing way of asserting themselves at times.

"Barnabas, this is Mr. Sauls, who has brought me a letter from my father," said Meg. She felt a slight uneasiness while making the introduction; the two men were so thoroughly antipathetical. But she had great trust in the preacher's instinct of hospitality, and in Mr. Sauls' savoir faire. She was not in the least prepared for what followed. The preacher's countenance changed when he looked at her visitor.

"I've seen ye afore, sir," he said in a low voice. "It passes me how ye are not 'shamed to be i' this county again. If I'd been here, I'd not ha' let my wife sit at th' same table with ye."

His fingers clenched unconsciously, his face grew stern, his blue eyes very bright. Meg had seen him look like that only once before—when he had caught the idiot frightening her.

Mr. Sauls put up his eyeglass and stared deliberately, and a little insolently. He always grew outwardly cool when an adversary waxed hot.

"You have the advantage of me," he said. "I don't know to what particular cause for shame you are alluding. Mrs. Thorpe has never, I believe, been the worse for my acquaintance, either from a spiritual or worldly point of view."

The innuendo made Meg hot, but the preacher did not notice it.

"Ye need not tell me that," he said; "but ye are no' fit company for her, unless ye ha' repented."

Meg put her hand on his arm. "I don't know what all this is about," she said; "but Mr. Sauls has come a long way to bring me news of my father. I am very grateful to him for that."

A month ago she would not have tried to remonstrate.

"You need not be afraid, Mrs. Thorpe," said George. "I don't quarrel before ladies; but, if your husband likes to attempt 'bringing me to repentance' when you are not by, I shall be delighted, and will promise to give him every attention."

He paused; but the preacher kept a tense silence. The appeal in his wife's voice, and, perhaps, the touch of her fingers, restrained him.

"Good-afternoon!" said George, and turned on his heel.

"Good-bye!" said Meg, and then held out her hand. She had been angry at the sneer at the preacher; but she could not bear, even seemingly, to desert any one who had done her a service.

"Please shake hands with me," she said. "And don't go away angry, after having brought me such good news."

She felt a little as if she were standing between fire and gunpowder, but that did not appear in her manner. She would have thought it "beneath" both herself and Barnabas to allow it to.

George took the hand, and held it a moment in his. He would have liked to kiss it, and all the more because that "canting brute" was looking on; but he did not: he reverenced Meg too much.

"Give my most humble respects to Mrs. Russelthorpe," he said; and then, with real kindliness: "I am glad you are going to your father. You will go soon? That's right! He is waiting for you. He told me to tell you to make haste. He will do his best to wait till you come."

"He will!" said Meg. "I think we shall see each other this once more, because we both want it so."

"A most illogical 'because,'" said George to himself. "But yet, God bless her, and give her her heart's desire!"

He looked back once, and saw the two still standing under the rick.

"And d——n the preacher!" he added. "By-the-bye, what had that fellow meant?" George grew angry in thinking of him.

But in Margaret's heart there was a great peace.

Her father had not cast her off; it was only she who had been faithless.

Oh! it was so much easier to cry, Mea culpa! than to allow that he had forgotten.

She had tried to offer God resignation, but He had given her joy. The level rays of the setting sun lit up her happy face, and made her short hair shine like a halo round her head. She put her hand before her eyes, and laughed a low, soft laugh like a contented child.

Mr. Sauls was not a very angelic messenger; but he had brought her peace and goodwill. With a radiant smile she watched him make his way over the shining, sun-tinged stubble. That smile, however, was not for him.

The preacher woke her from her golden reverie.

"What does he call himself?" he asked.

"My father?—oh, you mean Mr. Sauls?"

"Then he lies!" said Barnabas succinctly. "For his name's Cohen, and he's the man who ruined Lydia. His hand is not clean enough to touch you, Margaret. It were all I could do not to pull ye back; only," cried the preacher with sudden bitterness, "I minded he's a gentleman, who ye'd naturally trust, an' I might ha' scared ye."

"I am not scared by you," said Meg. "I never am now."

She brought her thoughts back from London and her father with something of a jerk. How could this be? Surely it was a mistake. It was impossible to connect Mr. Sauls' familiar, and, to her, commonplace figure, with the villain of the preacher's tragedy. Mr. Sauls wasn't a villain, and he was never tragic.

Then she looked at Barnabas; and, at the sight of the strong indignation in his face, her sympathy suddenly turned to him. She had loved neither of these men; but the preacher's was the type she understood best. The man who sneered could never appeal to Meg, who was religious to her finger tips, as did the man who fought and agonised and prayed. Her loyalty and faith were on the preacher's side; and her loyalty and faith were strong allies. If the story was true, how durst Mr. Sauls have come and have met Barnabas unashamed?

"I don't understand," she said. "I don't want to think him wicked. He has been very good to me. Have you read my father's message? That was Mr. Sauls' doing; he told father how I had tried and failed. Oh, yes, and he brought back my locket too—though that is nothing in comparison to the message."

Barnabas turned the locket over in his hand. It was a curious possession to lie on his brown palm. It reminded him of a good many things.

"Ye canna keep it!" he said at last. "But ye shall go to your father. We'll start by to-morrow's coach, an' ye like. I'll be taking you to a sink of iniquity, but I knew I'd go to London some day. No! doan't thank me, lass. Do ye suppose I doan't see wi'out tellin' that that's what ye've wanted more nor ought else, an' that it's new life to 'ee? He pulls hardest. Ye'll go back to your own people!" He sighed heavily. A presentiment of parting was on him, and his dread of London amounted to an absolute and quite unreasoning horror.

"But for th' locket—I'll not hav' ye touch what that rascal's fingers ha' dirtied. I'll follow and tell him that."

"Not that, Barnabas! Promise me you won't quarrel with him! Take the locket, if you like—but promise."

"Are ye feared for him?"

"No. Though, if I were, I shouldn't be ashamed of it! I'm not afraid for him, but you'll never forgive yourself, if you hurt him. Oh, Barnabas!" cried Meg, half laughing. "You repent more bitterly over your sins than he does. I don't want you to go in sackcloth and ashes all your days for Mr. Sauls, who has never in his life, I suppose, felt for any one what you have."

"God forgi'e me! I ha' hated him sorely," said Barnabas; "but, an' it's for me, Margaret—I'll promise."