Some of them were so joyous that they stirred in him almost a bitter incredulity as he read them in these days of loss and pain.

One was a sonnet which she had written during a two days' absence of his,--his only absence from his mother's house for six years.

Mercy had been astonished at her sense of loneliness in these two days.

"O Stephen," she had said, when he came back, "I am honestly ashamed of having missed you so much.

Just the knowing that you wouldn't be here to come in, in the evenings, made the days seem a thousand years long, and this is what came of it." And she gave him this sonnet:-- TO AN ABSENT LOVER.
That so much change should come when them dost go, Is mystery that I cannot ravel quite.
The very house seems dark as when the light Of lamps goes out.