CHAPTER XIV.
UNREST.
The summer months had passed away, and September had come and gone, and yet Cardo had not arrived.

Valmai had trusted with such unswerving faith that in September all her troubles would be over--that Cardo would come to clear her name, and to reinstate her in the good opinion of all her acquaintances; but as the month drew to its close, and October's mellow tints began to fall on all the country-side, her heart sank within her, and she realised that she was alone in the world, with no friend but Nance to whom to turn for advice or sympathy.
A restless feeling awoke in her heart--a longing to be away from the place where every scene reminded her of her past happiness and her present sorrow.

Every day she visited the little grave in the churchyard, and soon that corner of the burying-ground, which had once been the most neglected, became the neatest and most carefully tended.
For her own child's sake, all the other nameless graves had become sacred to Valmai; she weeded and trimmed them until the old sexton was proud of what he called the "babies' corner." A little white cross stood at the head of the tiny grave in which her child lay, with the words engraved upon it, "In memory of Robert Powell -- --." A space was left at the end of the line for another name to be added when Cardo came home, and the words, "Born June the 30th; died August the 30th," finished the sad and simple story.

Nance, too, who seemed to have revived a good deal latterly, often brought her knitting to the sunny corner, and Valmai felt she could safely leave her grassy garden to the care of her old friend.
"You are better, Nance," she said one day, when she had been sitting long on the rocks gazing out to sea, in one of those deep reveries so frequent with her now, "and if I paid Peggi 'Bullet' for living with you and attending to you, would you mind my going away?
I feel I cannot rest any longer here; I must get something to do--something to fill my empty hands and my empty heart." "No, calon fach," said Nance the unselfish, "I will not mind at all, I am thinking myself that it is not good for you to stay here brooding over your sorrow.

Peggi 'Bullet' and I have been like sisters since the time when we were girls, and harvested together, and went together to gather wool on the sheep mountains.