I shall only be a trouble to you----" "Don't talk of trouble?
Wait till I fetch the doggie!" And, turning from him a moment, she ran to pick up Charlie, who, as she had said, was snugly ensconced in the folds of her cloak, which she had put for him under the shelter of a projecting boulder,--"Could you carry him, do you think ?" He nodded assent, and put the little animal under his coat as before, touched almost to weak tears to feel it trying to lick his hand.
Meanwhile his unknown and scarcely visible protectress put an arm round him, holding him up as carefully as though he were a tottering infant.
"Don't hurry--just take an easy step at a time,"-- she said--"The moon rises a bit late, and we'll have to see our way as best we can with the stars." And she gave a glance upward.

"That's a bright one just over the coombe,--the girls about here call it 'Light o' Love.'" Moving stiffly, and with great pain, Helmsley was nevertheless impelled, despite his suffering, to look, as she was looking, towards the heavens.
There he saw the same star that had peered at him through the window of his study at Carlton House Terrace,--the same that had sparkled out in the sky the night that he and Matt Peke had trudged the road together, and which Matt had described as "the love-star, an' it'll be nowt else in these parts till the world-without-end-amen!" And she whose eyes were upturned to its silvery glory,--who was she?
His sight was very dim, and in the deepening shadows he could only discern a figure of medium womanly height,--an uncovered head with the hair loosely knotted in a thick coil at the nape of the neck,--and the outline of a face which might be fair or plain,--he could not tell.

He was conscious of the warm strength of the arm that supported him, for when he slipped once or twice, he was caught up tenderly, without hurt or haste, and held even more securely than before.

Gradually, and by halting degrees, he made the descent of the hill, and, as his guide helped him carefully over a few loose stones in the path, he saw through a dark clump of foliage the glimmer of twinkling lights, and heard the rush of water.

He paused, vaguely bewildered.
"Nearly home now!" said his guide, encouragingly; "Just a few steps more and we'll be there.