“I suppose I can teach,” thought Pat. “I have my old license. They won’t need me at the Bay Shore…they’ve had Anna Palmer there for years to help and she’ll stay on. But I can’t build up a new life…I’m too tired. I’ll just go on existing…withering into unimportance…drifting from one place to another…rootless…living in houses I hate…oh, can it be I standing here looking at the place where Silver Bush was?…that old Bible verse…‘it shall be a heap forever…it shall not be built again’…I wish that were true…I wish no house could ever be built here again…it will be a desecration. Oh, if I could only wake up and find it all a dream!”

“Pat, darling,” said a voice from the shadows around her.

She turned…incredulous…amazed…

“Jingle!”

The old name sprang to her lips. The autumn dusk was no longer cold and loveless over the remote hills. Something seemed to have come with him…courage…hope…inspiration…that same dear sense of protection and understanding that had come to her that evening of long ago when he had found her lost in the dark on the Base Line road. She held out both her hands but he caught her in his arms…his lips were seeking hers…a tremor half fear, half delight, shook her. And then that old, old, unacknowledged ache of loneliness she had tried to stifle with Silver Bush vanished forever. His lips were on hers…and she knew. It was like a tide turning home.

“I’ve made you mine forever with that kiss,” he said triumphantly. “You can never belong to anyone else. And I’ve waited long enough for it,” he added with his old laugh.

Pat stood quivering with his arms about her. Life was not over after all…it was only beginning.

“I…I don’t deserve you, Hilary,” she whispered humbly. “It seems…it seems…oh, are you really here? I’m not dreaming it, am I?”

“I’m real, sweetheart…joy…delight…wonder! I started as soon as I saw the account of the fire in an Island paper. But I was coming anyway…I had only been waiting to finish our house. I know what this tragedy of Silver Bush must have meant to you…but I’ve a home for you by another sea, Pat. And in it we’ll build up a new life and the old will become just a treasury of dear and sacred memories…of things time cannot destroy. Will you come to it with me?”