And then
his thoughts would play about the lonely pile, and come back with a
sense of homely relief to the fairy path which Nance's little feet had
trod, in light and dark, and storm and shine, since ever she could walk.
He pictured her as a tiny girl running fearlessly across the grim
pathway to school, dancing in the sunshine, bending to the storm, and
all alone when she had been kept in--he wondered with a smile what she
had been kept in for.
He thought of her, as he had seen her, walking to church, her usually
blithe spirit tuned to sedateness by the very fact, and, to him,
delightfully stiffened by the further fact that she, almost alone among
her friends and school-fellows, wore Island costume, while all the rest
flaunted it in all the colours of the rainbow. And he laughed happily to
himself, for very joy, at thought of the sweet elusive face in the
shadow of the great sun-bonnet. There was not a face in all Sark to
compare with it, nor, for him, in all the world.
But this night, as be stood there pulling slowly at his pipe and
thinking of Nance, was one of the black nights.
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