Page:Maria Felicia.pdf/237

 every word of greeting and welcome, question and answer. There was nothing left for Andrew but to grasp the stranger’s hand and take him into his room. He was not a little surprised to find the hand, which trembled with cold, very soft and delicate. Pushing a chair to the warmest place for his belated guest, that he might warm and recover as soon as possible, he tried at the same time to take off his shoulders the cape from whose heavy folds the water was pouring in streams; but when he looked into the stranger’s face his hands dropped in amazement and the mantle fell to the floor.

“It is I,” the harper said in a faint voice, shyly fixing his eyes on Andrew, and breathlessly sinking into the chair. “If I had not at last seen your light in the tower I should have perished, for my strength was almost gone. It was a lighthouse for me in two ways—I turned to it with my soul as well as with my eyes. I am coming back to Hlohov, coming back, for I have found that the light of truth burns here alone and that you are its