Then I stretched out my hand and
slowly raised the lid of the basket.
"I could not give you my life, so I have brought you my death!" Those
were her words. What could she mean--what could it all mean? I must know
or I would go mad. There it lay, whatever it was, wrapped up in linen.
Ah, heaven help me! It was a small bleached human skull!
A dream! After all, only a dream by the fire, but what a dream! And I am
to be married to-morrow.
_Can_ I be married to-morrow?
BARBARA WHO CAME BACK
CHAPTER I
THE RECTORY BLIND
This is the tale of Barbara, Barbara who came back to save a soul alive.
The Reverend Septimus Walrond was returning from a professional visit to
a distant cottage of his remote and straggling parish upon the coast of
East Anglia. His errand had been sad, to baptise the dying infant of a
fisherman, which just as the rate was finished wailed once feebly and
expired in his arms. The Reverend Septimus was weeping over the sorrows
of the world. Tears ran down his white but rounded face, for he was
stout of habit, and fell upon his clerical coat that was green with age
and threadbare with use. Although the evening was so cold he held his
broad-brimmed hat in his hand, and the wind from the moaning sea tossed
his snow-white hair.
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