Then one afternoon the nurse was called out of the sickroom and returned to tell the old lord that a young woman very specially requested to be allowed to visit his lordship. It seemed that she was a relative of his own. Her name, when his lordship had known her, had been Much-Afraid. But it seemed that she had now changed her name and was no longer a Fearing. She had been absent from the Valley for some time, but had recently returned and seemed most particularly anxious to see his lordship once again.

“Much-Afraid!” muttered the old man, tossing restlessly on his bed. The name seemed to stir some kind of echo in his memory. “Much-Afraid!” Then after a moment he muttered: “Why, that was the name of the girl who refused to marry that vagabond, Craven Fear, the brother of my daughter-in-law, Gloomy. Let me see—didn’t she go on some kind of fantastic journey? Yes, that was it—she went to the mountains with that mad fanatic they call the Shepherd. And that young fool, Pride, went after her to try to bring her back, and it is said the Shepherd hurled him into the sea. Some of the others went too to kidnap her, but they failed. So she got to the mountains after all, did she? I wonder what happened to her?”

His curiosity was awakened, and after a moment or two of muttering to himself he said to the nurse, “So she’s back again, is she?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And says she isn’t a Fearing any longer! What did you say she calls herself now?”

“Grace and Glory, my lord.”

“No longer a Fearing!” muttered the old man. “Grace and Glory. I wonder what happened to her? What did the Shepherd do to her?”

A last spurt of curiosity overcame him. He’d see for himself what she was like, this one-time Much-Afraid Fearing, who had eluded the whole gang who went after her, and wasn’t a Fearing any longer.

“Tell the young woman she may come in,” he growled out at last. And in a moment or two Grace and Glory entered the room, followed by her two handmaidens.

“Here, who are these, eh?” growled the old man testily. “I only agreed to see one. Which of you is my relative, Much-Afraid, or Grace and Glory, or whatever you call yourself now?”

“I am,” said Grace and Glory smilingly, “and these are my two handmaidens, Joy and Peace. They go wherever I go.”

She then stepped quietly forward and stood beside his bed. The old man and the woman who had been to the High Places looked at one another in silence.

“What’s this?” he burst out fretfully after a long scrutiny. “The last time I saw you you were deformed and had a hideous squint or something. What’s happened to you?”