She used to sit so when he had tormented her, waiting to be coaxed back to love and smiles again.

The hard man's eyes filled with tears, as he thought of it.

He watched the deep, tearless sobs that shook her breast: he had wounded her to death,--his bonny Margret! She was like a dead thing now: what need to torture her longer?
Let him be manly and go out to his solitary life, taking the remembrance of what he had done with him for company.

He rose uncertainly,--then came to her: was that the way to leave her?
"I am going, Margret," he whispered, "but let me tell you a story before I go,--a Christmas story, say.

It will not touch you,--it is too late to hope for that,--but it is right that you should hear it." She looked up wearily.
"As you will, Stephen." Whatever impulse drove the man to speak words that he knew were useless, made him stand back from her, as though she were something he was unfit to touch: the words dragged from him slowly.
"I had a curious dream to-night, Margret,--a waking dream: only a clear vision of what had been once.