"Joy cometh in the morning," she said, half to herself, half to the men who walked, sombre and silent, beside her, and the shadow of a smile hovered on her lips. They looked at her wonderingly. The night of terror had taken toll of her, and she was pale as the last star before dawn. Yet her white beauty framed in hanging hair shone like some rare thing that had passed through fire and come out unscathed and purified in the passing. "_Il faut souffrir pour être belle_" is a frivolous French saying, but, like many frivolous phrases, has its basic roots in the truth. It was true enough of Christine Chaine in that hour. She had suffered and was beautiful. Dour old Andrew McNeil gave a sigh for the years of life that lay behind him, and a glance at the face of the other man; then, like a wise being, he said,
So Christine and Dick Saltire walked alone.
"Let us hurry," she said suddenly, quickening her pace. "I feel as though something may have happened."
But all was silent at the farm. It was still too early even for the servants to be astir, and the big front door stood open as she and the other woman had left it an hour or so agone.
She left Saltire in the stoep and went within. The little girls slept peacefully, ignorant of the absence of their brother.
All seemed unchanged, yet Christine's searching eye found one thing that was unusual--a twist of paper stuck through the slats of the shutter. In a moment, she had it untwisted and was reading the words printed in ungainly letters upon it.
"Do not worry. Roddy quite safe. Will come back when his father returns."
"I knew," she whispered to herself, "I knew that joy cometh." She looked in the mirror and was ashamed of the disarray she saw there, yet thought that, even so, a man who loved her might perhaps find her fair. As a last thought, she took Roddy's two yellow roses and stuck them in the bosom of her gown. Then she went back to the stoep and, showing Saltire the paper, told him the story of the whispering thing that had sighed so often for Roddy's safety outside her window.
"I feel sure, somehow, that, after all, he is safe, and with that friend who knew more than we did, who knew all the tragedy of the mother and the other two little sons, and feared for Roddy from the first."