In a Mysterious Way

THE POST-OFFICE

From 8.30 A.M. on, the tide of travel in Ledge always tended towards the post-office, but on the famous morning when Mrs. Lathbun expected to hear from her lawyer, the post-office's vicinity resembled nothing so much as its own appearance upon Election Day. Every one that ever had received a letter intended to be there to see if Mrs. Lathbun would get hers. Long before train time not only the office itself, but the adjoining rooms and the porch outside, were comfortably crowded with a pleasantly anticipative collection of interested observers.

"The United States Government doesn't allow me to interfere in politics, or I'd come right square out with my views," said Mrs. Ray, who held public interest with a tight rein, while awaiting the mail. "My views may be uninteresting, but I hit enough nails on the head to box up a good many people a year."

"What do you think?" some one asked.

"I don't think anything," said Mrs. Ray; "I know!"

"Well, what do you know, then?"

"I know that a letter-getter stays a letter-getter, and the reverse the reverse. Just as I know that case-knives are suspicious and that picking chestnuts may be a bunco game as easy as anything else. I've found it nothing but a bunco game, myself. I've never made my chestnuts pay, just because they were so easy picked up by other people; and you can't hire boys to do your nutting for you,—boys eat up all the profits and most of the chestnuts into the bargain. Yes, indeed. And as for those two up at Nellie's—they'll get no letter. Wait and see."

"But what will happen to them then?" asked Joey Beall, aching to discuss the details of the arrest and the journey to Geneseo.

"I don't know, but I can tell you one piece of news, and it isn't gossip either; it come straight from Nellie O'Neil herself; she's been here this morning."

"Have they found out anything new?"

"Not about them; but her other two is leaving."

"What!"

"Yes, going this afternoon." Mrs. Ray folded her arms and leaned back against the shelves containing her grocery business.

The sensation caused by this extra and wholly unexpected bit of news was thorough and sincere. Everybody looked at everybody else.

Mrs. Dunstall pressed forward. "Haven't they paid, either?" she asked, with horror in her voice.

"Oh, yes, they've paid." Mrs. Ray was quickly reassuring on this point. "But with them, it's something else. I don't know for sure just what, but I guess that eldest one's beginning to see that it's no use as far as she's concerned; but she'll have to do something with that house she was fixing up to live in. Sarah Catt told me she never heard anything so crazy as building a house to live in while a dam that Mr. Ledge don't want built is being built. She says her husband says that dam never will be built. She says Mr. Ledge is very quiet, but he's very sensible and he says there's quicksands all under us."

This statement caused another flutter of sensation.

"Can't you dam a quicksand? I thought it run just like water." Thus Joey Beall's fiancée from the back.

"No, you can't," said Pinkie. "I know."

"I'd be sorry to see the dam go," said Mrs. Wiley. "Cousin Catterwallis Granger looked to see it raise all the property around here."

"Drown all the property around here, you mean," said Mrs. Ray. "I thank heaven it's the Dam Commission and not me who'll have to adjust all that dam's going to drown before it gets done. Josiah Bates says he heard that they'll have to take up all the cemeteries from here to Cromwell."

"Why?" asked Pinkie.

"Why? Why, because no matter what powers a commission can hold over the living, no legislature can find a law for drowning the dead, I guess. They've all got to be moved and set out in rows again in a new place. Seems like I never will see the last of Mr. Ray's two wives! But I shan't have to pay for their new start in life this time, anyway."

"Where will they put them next, do you suppose?" said Mrs. Dunstall, referring to the cemeteries—not to Mr. Ray's former wives.

"I guess we'll all want to know that," said Mrs. Ray, turning her head as if she heard the train (the tension in the room was increasing momentarily,—so was the crowd). "I'm sure I wonder what will become of Mr. Ray. I never could feel that I really was done with him, and now it seems maybe I ain't. I wish they'd buy my three-cornered cow pasture for a new cemetery. Then I could cut his grass when I went to milk my cow."

"The dam'll have to pay for the new cemeteries, won't it?" asked Lucia Cosby in some trepidation.

"The dam'll pay for everything. That's why every one wants it so bad," said Mrs. Ray.

"Yes, it is," said Pinkie.

"Which room have the Lathbuns got?" some one asked, looking down towards the O'Neil House.

"The end one," said Mrs. Dunstall.

"The curtains are down," said Nathan, elbowing his way to the window.

"They never get up till noon."

There was a hush,—sudden but intense. The train was approaching.

"Yes, that's the train," said Mrs. Ray; "well, we'll soon know now." She tucked her shawl tighter than ever, and got the key ready.

"Mrs. O'Neil'll be pretty lonesome to-night with them all gone at once," hazarded a bystander.

"She'll miss those girls," said Mrs. Dunstall; "they're real nice young ladies, she says. But she won't miss the Lathbuns."

"We'll miss the Lathbuns," said Mrs. Wiley; "they've been so interesting to talk about. We've even got Uncle Purchase to where he knows they live at Nellie's. I tell you that was work. He's so deaf now." She sighed.

"I guess it wasn't any worse than what the Bentons went through with Gran'ma Benton teaching the parrot when they lived at Nellie's," said Mrs. Ray. "Poor Clay Wright Benton was in here yesterday to see if I'd board Gran'ma Benton and the parrot again. He says Sarah says she won't come home till the parrot leaves, and he's most wild. Gran'ma Benton's been teaching the parrot to say something new. She says 'Where's the Lathbuns, Polly?' and the parrot says 'Out chestnutting,' only it won't say it days. It just says it nights. And nights it's wild over saying it. Last night no one in the house got one wink of sleep. Clay sit up till midnight to ask it where the Lathbuns was, and then Gran'ma Benton sit up and asked it where they was till morning. Poor Clay! He says it's too awful how she's spoiled that parrot. It's afraid of spiders, and it's so afraid of them at night that they have to keep a night-light burning so it can see all over whenever it wakes."

"Such doings!" said Mrs. Wiley, in disgust.

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Ray. "I'd like to see myself burning a night-light for a parrot. If it boards with me, it'll take its spiders just as they come."

"That's right," said Pinkie, with decision.

"Well, we don't need any parrot," said Mrs. Wiley. "We've got Uncle Purchase. Not but what I'm amused hearing about the parrot. But then, I've been amused hearing about the Lathbuns, too," she sighed heavily.

"Something else'll come up," said Mrs. Dunstall, cheerfully, "and you don't really need anything to talk about while you've got your Uncle Purchase, you know."

"Well, I suppose maybe not," said Mrs. Wiley, and sighed again.

"Well, thank Heaven," said Mrs. Ray, "I'm never short of two things,—work and talk." She began to finger the key as she spoke, and all ears were at once strained to listen for the sound of the feet of the bearer of the mail-bag.

Deathly silence reigned. In a few seconds the footsteps did approach, the gate creaked and then banged. Mrs. Ray stepped with majestic haste to the window and called out:

"Wipe your feet!"

The obedience that ensued whetted curiosity to more ravenous desire than ever. People had lost sight of the main issue and were all riveted to the single question—would Mrs. Lathbun get her letter?

The door opened and Clay Wright Benton came in with the bag.

"Lay it here," commanded Mrs. Ray, and Clay Wright Benton laid it there and fell back into the crowd behind. Mrs. Ray put on her spectacles and adjusted her shawl. In the intense excitement of the moment, nobody said a word. The room was as full as it would hold, and people who had apparently been secreted in other portions of the house now came pouring in through the doors connecting therewith. The one window facing the porch had turned into a mere honey-comb of faces.

Mrs. Ray took up the key. A thrill went around as she inserted it in the padlock and slowly turned it. Then she took it out of the padlock and the padlock out of the lock. She laid key and padlock carefully aside. "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note," as she slowly drew the lengthwise iron from the rings and laid that aside. A sort of fresh intenseness pervaded the atmosphere as she opened the mouth of the bag and inserted her arm. While her arm was in and her hand was feeling for the mail, a boy sneezed and every one turned and looked at him witheringly. This little incident was taken in the same light as the inter-mission between two numbers of a concert, for all who were at the doors at once took advantage of it to squeeze inside. The small room, which had been unpleasantly full before, was now packed to suffocation. Mrs. Ray drew out her arm. The interest was mounting each second. She laid two packages, tied each with United States Government twine, upon the counter, turned the bag upside down and shook it. If a pin had fallen out, any one could have heard it, but nothing fell out. Mrs. Ray folded the bag carefully and laid it on the floor behind her. The atmosphere was breathless in every sense of the word. Mrs. Ray untied the first package, taking a full minute to pick out the knot. She hung up the string. The string fell off from where she hung it, and she picked it up and hung it up a second time, this time more slowly and carefully. Then she took out the postmarking machine. A sudden sigh went around; every one had forgotten the necessity of the postmark. Mrs. Ray turned the package face down and post-marked every piece carefully without reading a single address. Then she turned them over, gave her shawl a fresh and most careful adjustment, and proceeded to sort the mail. When it was sorted, she called the roll of names amidst a hush that was awe-inspiring. The few who had letters crowded to the fore, received them and stayed there, greatly to the aggravation of those who had none, and got shoved to the rear accordingly.

Mrs. Ray now untied the second package, and hung up that string. Both strings fell off together. She took up both strings at once, smoothed them out and hung them up again. They stayed hung this time. Then she post-marked the second package. It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene,—the wrought-up faces, the fixed calm of Mrs. Ray herself. Then she called the roll for the second batch. Each time a name was read off, a wave of psychic emotion swept the room. One has to get into the real true life of the country to appreciate the tremendous tumulus which gossip had erected upon which to rear the monument of this moment. One by one the names were all called; one by one the pile of letters in Mrs. Ray's hand diminished. When it came to the last one, and the last one was for Joey Beall, Joey received it almost as if it were some species of sacrament.

"Is that all?" some one in the back asked.

"That's all," said Mrs. Ray.

All turned to go. The outburst of pent-up feelings was tremendous.

"I told you so," Mrs. Ray said over and over again. "I knew they'd got no letter." The babel all of a sudden rose into so much noise that it was evident that the heights to which popular feeling had risen were going a bit higher yet. The egress from the stifling room ceased. Nobody knew just what it was, but all became aware that something fresh had happened. Nobody knew what had happened, and nobody seemed able to find out. All that was known was that something held every one spellbound and motionless in spite of their individual desire to go on out.

After what seemed a deadlock of long duration but which was in fact a matter of but a few seconds, it developed that the trouble arose around the door leading on to the porch. Then it appeared that while every one in the post-office was trying to get out by that door, Mary Cody was trying to get in by the same way, and Mary Cody was young, strong, and determined.

For a few seconds the battle pressed wildly. Then Mary Cody won out and entered. She was out of breath and disheveled.

"Why, what is the matter?" Joey Beall, who was nearest, asked; "there's something new down your way, I'll bet a peanut."

Mary Cody gasped. "Oh, my," she said, "I run right up to tell you. We've just found out as their room is empty. They must of skipped in the night."

"Skipped in the night!" cried Mrs. Dunstall.

"Skipped!" cried Pinkie.

"Oh, Mrs. Ray," wailed Mrs. Wiley, "how'll we ever be able to tell Uncle Purchase!"

But Mrs. Ray stood forth like a modern Medusa in her rage.

"I've been expecting it all along," she exclaimed wrathfully. "I'm a great judge of character, and I never looked for nothing else. Now, how can they be arrested? We must catch 'em!"

"If we can catch 'em!" said Josiah Bates.

"If we can catch them!" said Mrs. Ray,—"if! Young man, they'll be caught. You wait and see!" She hastily threw her shawl over her head, and rushed wildly out with the excited crowd. It is proverbial that there are times when a common sentiment merges all classes into one.

AFTERMATH

The excitement broke up into wide-spreading waves. All divided at once into two distinct parties,—those who wanted to discuss the matter further, and those who were filled with the hunter instinct and so craved to set off at once in pursuit of "the foxy pair." Mrs. Ray justly remarked that "they couldn't possibly get more than twelve hours' start, in just one night," and as it was incredible to suppose that they would return in the direction from which they had originally come, it followed that there was only two-thirds of the horizon to scour in any case. Elmer Hoskins and his dog lost no time, but set forth at once.

Mary Cody walked back down the hill telling a deeply interested circle the story of how, etc. (and that for the fifth time in ten minutes); another group stood excitedly on Mrs. Ray's porch; another set off to break the news to Ledgeville, and still others spread here and there, after the manner of distracted bees into whose hive some great and disturbing force has suddenly penetrated.

"We won't be able to begin to get this in Uncle Purchase's head for two days, at least," mourned Mrs. Wiley; "and Uncle Purchase is so awful fond of knowing things, too."

"They'll never catch them," said Lucia Cosby; "they know all the roads too well. They know every road there is to know."

"I should think they did!" said Mrs. Dunstall. "They've not got out of practice walking in this locality, I can tell you. Josiah Bates was down at the bottom of the St. Helena hill the other day, and if he didn't see them there. Oh, they know the roads."

"I'm sorry for the girl," said Clay Wright Benton.

"I ain't a bit sorry for her," said Mrs. Ray; "as a woman who works from before dawn to far on into the night to make a honest living by eleven different kinds of sweat on her brow, I ain't a bit sorry for either of them. And Jack O'Neil ain't going to be sorry for them, either; he told me last night if they was men, he'd get hold of 'em and take 'em out behind the wood-pile and he knew what they'd get. To-day isn't going to alter his views."

"If I was Mrs. O'Neil, I'd wash that shawl Mrs. Lathbun wore all the time," said Sarah Catt, one of the party escorting Mary Cody back to the hotel.

"It's in the tub already," said Mary Cody.

Mrs. O'Neil came running forth to meet them, her brown eyes shining more than ever.

"Oh, but they were a 'foxy pair,'" she exclaimed; "haven't they gone and left that hair-brush done up in a paper so that it's 'baggage,' and shows they want the room held for them till they come back. Oh, they've got the law at their finger-tips—those two."

The whole crowd entered the house. Alva and Lassie, packing in their room, had heard the news ten minutes earlier from Mrs. O'Neil herself. Lassie had watched her friend's face curiously, but Alva had too much else pressing upon her to be more than simply saddened.

When Mrs. O'Neil had gone Lassie had said almost hesitatingly: "They were adventuresses, weren't they, and Miss Lathbun's romance wasn't true, was it?"

"Let us not judge, even now," said Alva, quietly; "let us try to hope in some way. After all, what little things they were in life—so little, and probably beset beyond their strength. And such great things are pressing on me to-day. What do they matter? God forgive me for saying it."

Lassie was silenced.

When the Eastern mail train arrived about noon, belated as usual, their packing was quite finished. Mary Cody brought up the letters. Alva took hers into her room and a minute later she came to the door.

"Lassie," she said, "there is something here that I must attend to at once. Go down and have dinner, and I'll come a little late."

So Lassie went down to dine alone, and found Ingram waiting for her. She told him that Alva would come in a little.

"Has she had bad news?" he asked, startled by a presentiment of immediate sorrow.

"No, I think not," Lassie said; "she didn't speak so."

But Ingram stayed, distressed. "She has had bad news," he said; "poor girl—her tragedy is closing in fast. I can feel its end, myself."

His eyes went to the window. "Couldn't you go out with me for just an hour after dinner?" he asked wistfully. Then he smiled a little. "We can talk about the dam," he said—"or help hunt the Lathbuns."

She looked at him and they both knew that she would go. It was a very simple, almost childish, romance, theirs—but its lack of stress made it all the more alluring to two who were living under the wings of so much tragedy.

"I'll get my hat," Lassie said, and ran up-stairs. Alva's door was closed. "I'm lying down, please let me sleep. It's nothing but my head," she called from behind it. Lassie slipped on her wraps quickly and ran down; and they went out towards the Falls.

Mrs. Ray saw them go from the post-office window. The excitement having somewhat subsided, she was now left alone with Joey Beall's fiancée, who was there to try on her wedding dress.

"Such is life," Mrs. Ray commented; "that woman's pulled her shades down for a nice nap, and off they skip for a good-by down by the Falls. Oh, my, but those Falls are a blessing to the young! It's too far between roots and rocks for children to get down there, and as soon as anybody's married they never want to have nothing to do with love-making any more; so steep romantic places is just made for the only kind of people that have any reason for wanting to get to them."

"The Falls is full of meaning for lovers," said Joey Beall's fiancée, sentimentally. "Joey and I never get tired of them."

"You wait till you're married," said Mrs. Ray; "you'll find no meaning in climbing up and down those banks and having Joey jerk your arms out of the sockets, then. Yes, indeed. They call it tempestuous affection beforehand, but it comes to a plain jerk in the end. Life is full of learning."

"Gran'ma Benton's learning the parrot a great deal," said Sarah Catt. "I come by there just now and she's beginning already to teach it a new sentence. She says: 'Where are the Lathbuns, now?' and the parrot's got to learn to say 'Skipped,'—she's just set her heart on it."

"I d'n know but what I'm going to end by being sorry for that parrot," remarked Mrs. Ray, thoughtfully. "I think Gran'ma Benton's overdoing it a little, if she means it to keep up with the Lathbuns. You can force even a parrot beyond its strength. She's made it nervous, already. She's got to hold its claw all through every thunderstorm all summer long, and if a fly gets in its milk, it won't touch either the fly or the milk, which I call spoiling the parrot—not to speak of the fly and the milk, for of course no one else in a house is going to eat a fly or drink milk that a parrot won't look at."

"Sarah told me they had to take away all the looking-glasses every spring, or it cried the whole time it was moulting—over its tail feathers, you know," said the caller, thoughtfully.

"Well, if they come to live here, I shan't spoil it, I know that," said Mrs. Ray. "I shall be pleasant to it and I shall be kind, and it can run after me all it likes and I'll be careful never to step on it for the very simple reason that I don't want to take the time to clean up any sort of smashed creature, but it won't have no night-light here, nor get its claw held when it thunders, nor have the looking-glasses took down to spare its feelings. No one ever took a looking-glass down to spare my feelings, and I can't begin to take them down to spare a parrot's. Well, Sarah, I guess you can try on now. Wait till I fill up on pins. Oh, my lands alive, I wish I knew where those foxy Lathbuns are this minute."

"I guess Mr. Adams'll be glad to know they're caught," said Sarah Catt; "he's so nervous for fear they'll stop with him to-night. Joey saw him just after dinner. He was more scared even than Gran'ma Benton's parrot in a thunderstorm."

Mrs. Ray was thoughtfully putting pins in her mouth. "There's a great difference between a man's hand and a parrot's claw," she said with some difficulty. "Yes, indeed. Even in a thunderstorm."

THE DARKNESS BEFORE

When Lassie came back from that last walk to the Falls she went straight up to Alva's room, and found her lying on the bed, the faint light from the shaded window throwing a deep shadow upon her face and form. Her head and shoulders were a little propped up against the pillows, and her hands were clasped on her bosom instead of behind her head, as was her favorite position.

Lassie's eyes were shining and her heart was very full and happy with the bubbling joy of that bubbling joyous emotion which Youth in its ingenuous innocence, ignorance, and arrogance has elected to call "love." It had come very vividly to both herself and Ingram during their walk, and instead of discussing Alva's affairs, they had suddenly become more than ever keenly alive to their own. Ingram, conscious of good looks, good health, and a good income, had for some time faced the position very cheerfully and gratefully; but Lassie, conscious of no personal advantages at all equalling those pertaining to her demigod, was, of course, thrilled through and through. Certainly these be topsy-turvy days for chivalric standards, but perhaps a century later, people will quote with reverence from the stories of grandmother's experiences before grandpapa was finally secured.

Lassie was very happy. She felt sure that nothing so ideally beautiful and altogether remarkable as Ingram's speeches during the walk had ever been heard before. She was not engaged, but she was "as good as engaged." And before her début, too. Fancy the faces of the girls when she really announced it! She would be the first one of the whole set to be married! Life was nothing but vistas of joy. Ingram was absolutely going to take the same train that she did at six o'clock, and go two hours of the way with her. Oh!

And now she was back in Alva's room, standing at the bedside, looking down at her friend. Something in the other's lax position made her look more closely even in the semi-darkness.

"Your head is worse?" she asked, startled.

"No, dear," said Alva, and her voice rang strangely—like a low toned bell, chiming afar.

"Something has happened?"

"Yes, dear."

"Oh—" the young girl could not put the question.

Alva did not speak. Lassie felt her heart freezing harder every instant. It was always so, when one came within the circle of that greater existence. Part of the attraction of Ingram was that he was just so ordinarily human. Alva was never ordinary, and scarcely ever human. Oh, dear! Her lovely dream seemed suddenly slipping out to sea before this tremendous, quiet storm of resistless stress!

"You have had a letter?" she whispered timidly, at last.

"Yes, dear, and he is dead." Alva spoke quite steadily.

"Dead!"

"I had a letter from his friend—his doctor—the one who wrote for him. You were right in what you thought. He died last night, in the night, while I slept. He was unconscious when he died. He struggled first and suffered—while I was struggling and suffering, you remember—and then he grew still when I grew still, and then when I slept he slept and began to die, and while I still slept he died—that is—his body died."

Lassie sank down upon the bed beside her, took the clasped hands into her own, and burst into bitter tears, hiding her face in the four hands at once.

After a little Alva spoke again, still in the same low, ringing voice.

"It came so close that I did believe that it would be, but there are some dreams that may not be realized on earth. Mine was such a one."

Lassie lifted her head to look into her face; she was sufficiently accustomed to the dim light by this time to be able to see distinctly the pure and noble outlines, the large, tragic eyes. She felt herself crushed into speechlessness.

"He wrote me himself," Alva continued presently; "just the merest word. I read it. I read it twice. Then I sat still for a long, long time. Lassie," she pressed the girl's hands warmly, "it was good to think that I had shown my happiness to you, for no one will ever know that I was ever happy, now. Oh, it was so long that I sat here, thinking. I told you once, how, in the first day of my supreme joy, I went into the cathedral near the hospital and thanked God on my knees for all the past and made a vow to accept with courage all that might come to me, in return for that joy. I thought, as I prayed, that I'd go forth and gladly starve and freeze till I died, if it were the purchase price of such happiness. I am remembering that hour. I will not cry out, nor weep, nor say one word. I have had him; we shall be one again. My desire has always been only to be worthy him—to be worthy him—to be worthy him! And now I have the chance to prove myself so; and I will not fail,—though the heart in my body burst, my spirit will not fail."

Lassie was still, overawed.

"I had to search to be thankful at first," Alva went on, "but now I have found something to be very thankful for. I am so glad that it came before I had told my mother. She is spared. She will never know. Every one is spared except him and me, and we are strong—we can endure. We have endured. We can endure again."

"If you only could have gone and been with him!" wailed the girl, softly.

"Oh, how I have wished that! You don't know how I have wished that! It has been sweeping through me and rending me cruelly, but he did not wish it, or he would have sent for me. And I have tried never even to wish anything unless he wished it, too. You know how I have wished that I might have stayed there with him. But he begged me to go. They would not let me stay. I had to yield!"

"Shall you go as you planned, to-night?"

"No, dear, I want to stay here alone for three or four days, and then go home,—back to my duty to my parents, you know. I never meant to leave for long. Yes," she almost whispered, "I must hurry back home, forever."

"Never to return here?"

"I think, never. I cannot see how or why I should return."

Lassie's lips quivered. "And your house?" she whispered.

A long, sad breath passed over lips that did not quiver. "Ah, yes, my house," she answered softly; "I thought of going to it this afternoon, and then I could not. Dear little home nest,—there are nothing but happy thoughts there; all my best is there—unselfish dreams, devoted hopes, great aims, longings to make some one and every one glad."

She paused. Lassie leaned close.

"May I lie down beside you, Alva, and put my arms around you and hold you tightly, dear? It will be good-by, for you want me to go just the same, I know."

"Yes, dear, you must go. What time is it?"

"It's over an hour till the train. Let me hold you close, dear, I—I love you."

"Yes, Lassie, come; I'll be glad to have you. Your head will lie on my arm, and I shall like to draw you near as I might have drawn a little child, had life fallen out differently long ago."

Lassie crept up on the bed, clasped her arms about her and tried not to weep.

"You don't mind my talking of him, do you?" the woman asked, presently. "You know after you go I shall never have any one again;" her voice wailed desolate with the last words so that its very sound caused Lassie's sobs to renew their force.

"I don't mind anything that you want to do, Alva."

"It's storming in upon me what life was to have been. What does the world know of love? Love is something too great to comprehend. It costs blood and years and tears. It goes so deep that the very joy in it cuts like a knife. I knew that I was only to have had him a few weeks, that I should have to compress all that I felt for him into them. But what those few weeks would have meant! When to be quiet together was in itself all that we asked! When we should have had a library and a piano, and the gorge to look out over, and one another to talk to,—to be with!" She stopped—her breath failed her.

There was a pause, as if to let the tide of grief sweep up and out again.

"Oh, Lassie, we had waited so long and hopelessly," she went on finally, her sentences short and tense and broken. "I tried to be so patient. I tried so hard to do well with the bit of life dealt out to me. As much as I could, I followed in his path in the giving of my all to others and neither asking nor expecting for myself. I hoped nothing for us—nothing for us! And then I had to see him stretched out—crushed—maimed, and I had to live still, and smile into his eyes, and tell him that even that was more than I had deserved. And then came our dream—our precious dream—the promise of those few, sweet, perfect days! Oh, but why should I repine? I have been so happy. I have contemplated the heights, even if it was not given me to reach them."

There was another pause.

"Lassie, it is not my soul that is wailing; my soul is very strong and resolute. He left work undone and even this afternoon it came to me that that work was part of him and that in doing it I should do for him. If we could suffer annihilation in a good cause, we should survive in the cause. If I carry forward all that he held in heart, I shall continue to be one with him. I know it. I longed unutterably to be with him, to make his pain lighter, to share his hours at the last. I thought a great deal of our happiness, but I thought also of what he would teach me to do for the world. Oh, I can believe that he suffered last night. It was only the edge of the storm that brushed over me, but I know how I suffered. There are some men who cannot die, who are too sorely needed; and he was such a one. He did not want to leave his work."

She stopped, and Lassie felt the tide of grief rise full and ebb again.

"It wasn't love or marriage as the world understands it; but it was the supreme self sacrifice that my spirit cried for in consecration. I thought that I was to be greatly fitted for a great work."

Lassie whispered: "Perhaps you have been fitted."

"No. No! Heaven ordained that the sacrifice and the consecration should be greater than I had ever imagined. It ordained that he should pass away alone and leave me alone, too; and now it is left me to work out a new salvation. I try not to doubt, I do trust God completely. But I cannot see why—or how! Not yet. But, at any rate, the worst for me is come. I have touched bottom. Battle for me is past."

Then she rose from the bed, went to the window and let up the shade. The night of Nature's world, always full of potency, calmed her suddenly into another mood.

"It is snowing," she exclaimed; "that means that rain is falling on new-made graves." She came back from the window. "Lassie," she said, "my heart is broken, my future is crushed, and yet I feel so strong! It floods me fresh. I see now that wherever his soul passed last night, it must have passed in triumph—gone on to further work. I shall work, too. That is the legacy his letter left me—an intense desire to serve. How small I am, how great God is; all life's misery results from setting our little wills in opposition to His plan for our best. It is borne in upon me clearly; I recognize the fact well. Now when I leave this room next time and forever henceforth, so long as I live, I am willing with my whole soul to do whatever work there is laid out for me. I feel in my heart that no stumbling or even ridicule for stumbling can ever again cause me to falter. I have found Truth. I will be strong."

Lassie looked at her in wonder. The white look of unearthly radiance which men once knew as "Ecstasy" was indeed on her face now—on her pale, sad, worn face, filling it with a glow of wondrous resolution.

"Oh, Alva!" the girl exclaimed, and then, even as the exclamation left her lips, she was conscious of an upleaping of warm, human joy to think of the six o'clock train and Ingram's companionship. The higher plane was very high above her yet.

Alva pressed her hands to her eyes and face. "That was like a lightning flash, dear," she said; "oh, if I may only live by its light forever after. If only!" There was a brief silence; then,—

"I must pick up my things, I guess," the girl suggested.

"Yes, dear," Alva tried to smile; "yes, you must pick up your things. That's what life here means."

Lassie slipped into her own room. She was glad that Alva was quiet and that she could smile upon her again; it was truly what life meant to her. She was very little yet and very blind, and the angels might have been smiling meaningly and mercifully at one another over her pretty, childish head that hour.

But over Alva the Spirits of Heaven might have wept,—as they weep for any on earth who fancy that they have sounded either the depths or the heights of any design wrought out above.

Above is so far above, and we and all our hopes and joys and sorrows are so far beneath. So far beneath that radiant serenity which moves eternally forward in its fulfilling of the Divine Plan. His Divine Plan for the uplifting of all that He has made.

DAWN

As the train pulled out, a half hour later, Alva, now quite steady and serene, waved her hand, and then turned away so as not to see Lassie, weeping, yet clinging close to the strong arm thrown before her like a guard.

"You'll come home with me, my dear," said Mrs. O'Neil, who had come to the station, too; "you look a little tired and pale, and I'll help you finish your own packing, and then you must have some good hot tea and gingerbread."

Alva laid her hand in the kindly, warm hand of the other. "Yes, let us go home," she said; "but I'm not going to-night, so my packing can wait."

"You aren't going! Oh, I am glad. Then you'll have a little time for rest. You need it." Mrs. O'Neil was so frankly pleased that Alva was forced to thank her kindliness in spirit. The racked are so grateful to a tender touch after their sharpest agony.

They went across the tracks and up the little cinder-path. Mary Loretta and the cat came running out to meet them, and Mary Cody had the teakettle boiling.

"She's not going to-night," said Mrs. O'Neil, getting out the tea and handing it to Mary Cody, who was now cutting gingerbread. "I'm so glad; it would be so lonesome without her."

Mary Cody assented.

"And those two young people are happy, too," Mrs. O'Neil said to Alva, in the dining-room a minute later, "such a nice-looking couple!"

"I hope she'll be happy," said Alva, staring out of the window as she sat by the table waiting idly. "She will have everything to make for her happiness now." Lassie and Ingram had ceased to matter to her. Her brain could not include them in this hour.

Mrs. O'Neil's eyes filled as she glanced that way. The still, quiet face and form by the window had some tragedy written in every line, although the lips stayed closed and the bright-faced hostess felt what she could not know.

"There, my dear, there's the tea; let me pour your cup," she said. "Do put in some cream just for once, it's so nourishing; and why, I declare, if here isn't Mrs. Ray, just in time to have a cup with us!"

Mrs. Ray had passed the window and now opened the door and came in. There was an air of strongly repressed excitement about her.

"So she's gone," she said briskly. "I was peeking out watching the mail-bag to see that no one else stuck a letter in the strap on me, and I saw you all seeing her off. Pretty she is,—and it's plain to be seen what's going to happen next, and I'm very glad for them both."

"Yes," said Mrs. O'Neil, smiling; "we're all that."

"I come down for several reasons," said Mrs. Ray. "First," she turned to Alva, "there's a letter that come this morning, and heaven knows how it happened—with all my care—but it slipped under those pesky government scales and I found it when I dusted out this afternoon. I hope it isn't very important."

Alva took the letter with its typewritten address and put it in her pocket. "Don't worry, Mrs. Ray," she said, "Lassie's gone; I'm going very soon; nothing can matter much now, can it?" She managed to smile.

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Ray. "That's your view because you're going, but I can't say that I shall feel really settled in my mind till the dam's settled."

"But I thought the quicksand was going to settle the dam," said Mrs. O'Neil; "somebody said so."

"You can't settle even a quicksand with a legislature," said Mrs. Ray; "I guess I know. The United States Government is a great eye-opener, especially when you have to tend a post-office according to any new rules it finds time to have printed and mail you. I've had four pages of new rules sent me to-day."

"Here's your tea, Mrs. Ray," said Mrs. O'Neil; "do sit down. Bring some more gingerbread, Mary. And won't you have a little jam? I've a lot of nice fresh this-autumn, plum jam."

"No, I don't want any jam," said Mrs. Ray, seating herself; "but, Nellie, I've been hearing that legally your husband can't do nothing with the Lathbuns."

"Well, that isn't the worst," said Mrs. O'Neil, her face clouding considerably; "what do you think I've up and done? I was so mad I threw that old hair-brush over into the gorge, and I've thereby made Jack liable for a suit of damage for breaking into the luggage a guest leaves without due cause, or else for willful destruction of personal property belonging to another and unoffending party who has reposed trust only to be betrayed. Jack will have to go to the lawyer to-morrow to find out which. Oh, they were slick—those two. They've got the law down fine."

"Well, did you know they're caught?" Mrs. Ray brought this statement forth as the cannon does the cannon ball.

Mrs. O'Neil jumped in her chair. "Caught? No, I did not know it. When?"

"They just told me over at the station that they were arrested about three o'clock. I guess it's true. I hope so."

"Oh, to think of it," said Mrs. O'Neil, "to think of them sleeping here last night and in Geneseo to-night!"

"The complaints will come pouring in," said Mrs. Ray; "everybody has got a bill against 'em. I don't believe they'll be out of jail in years."

Alva turned her face again to the window. She had not thought much of the two unfortunate creatures during the past few hours, and their misery bore in upon her with a vivid, headlong shock.

"And those case-knives, too," Mrs. Ray continued; "did they have 'em on, I wonder."

"Oh, the case-knives don't count," said Mrs. O'Neil; "they were left here by a travelling man. He was around to-day and asked if it was here that he left them. I meant to tell you, but dear, dear, I've had so much to do, seems like."

Mrs. Ray was much taken aback, but quickly recovered herself.

"Oh, well, they could have used a hat-pin just as well. Anyhow, they might have got up in the night and murdered him some way. Mrs. Lathbun could have held him while Hannah Adele just stuck anything handy into him in every direction. I never could see what they had the case-knives for, anyhow, if it wasn't on the chance of some such game. For two women to carry six case-knives instead of combs and tooth-brushes is very suspicious in itself, I think."

"But, they weren't carrying them," said Mrs. O'Neil. "Jack thought they had them for opening windows, but to think of them staying here three weeks and no baggage. It makes me wild."

"Well, you and Mr. O'Neil are easy," said Mrs. Ray; "you're very mooney, both of you. You can't deny that, Nellie,—you and your husband haven't got real good common sense, or you'd have nailed their windows on from the outside the day you first mistrusted them."

"Well, we won't be mooney any more, anyhow," said Mrs. O'Neil; "the drillers came to-day with two freight cars of machinery, but Jack had them pay a week in advance. He says he won't even trust the State after this."

"I don't trust the United States any further than I can see 'em," said Mrs. Ray; "but this has been a good lesson for you, Nellie. You won't be letting any sharper that comes along wear your gran'mother's Paisley shawl while he spies out the road he's going to skip out over next, again."

"Indeed and I won't," said Mrs. O'Neil feelingly.

"Sammy Adams was in to spend the afternoon," Mrs. Ray went on. "We talked the question of my marrying him all over again. He always asks me when he comes for the whole afternoon like that, and he had such a hard time getting it all out to-day with people running in to talk about the Lathbuns every second, that I just had to appreciate the way he stuck to it clear through to the end."

"What did you say?" asked Mrs. O'Neil.

"I didn't say much. I was too busy talking to the others, you know. Yes, indeed. But I was sorry for him. He's so scared sleeping alone in his house for fear of maybe being swindled in his bed before he knows it. And now he's worried for fear the dam is going to drown him unexpectedly, too. They say if that dam is built and does bu'st, the Johnstown Flood won't be in it with Rochester. The folks that want the Falls saved 'll get their chance to say, 'I told you so' then; but that won't help Sammy much."

"What did you say?" Mrs. O'Neil asked again.

"Well, when I got a chance, I told him I'd despise a man who'd let me keep on working as hard as I work now, but that if any man was to ask me to give up the church, or the post-office, or my chickens, that would show he didn't know me, right in the start."

"What did he say to that?" Mrs. O'Neil asked with interest.

"He didn't know what to say at first, but then he's the kind of man that never does know what to say. I declare, Nellie, I do think men that want to marry women act too foolish for words. Yes, indeed. If a man wants to do anything else in the world he gets to work and does it; but if he wants to marry a woman he just sits still and looks silly and leaves it to the woman to be done or not."

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. O'Neil.

"Think so," said Mrs. Ray; "I know so. I've had men acting foolish around where I was all my life. I've tripped over 'em while sweeping, cooking, washing, tending Mr. Ray's family by his second wife, sorting mail,—why, I've had men thinking what a good wife I'd make all my life, and looking so like idiots while they thought it that I wouldn't look at it like they did for any money. They stop by the fence when I'm ploughing, and just grin with thinking what a hired man I'd make. I was cleaning the long aisle carpet at the church last Wednesday, and that minister that's visiting our minister couldn't keep away from the window. When I take my eggs and chickens to market, the buyer down there looks at how I've got those eggs packed and pinches my chickens, and then he turns to me and goodness, but his glance is loving."

"Well, you're a very smart woman, you know," said Mrs. O'Neil.

"I know that; I know it just as well as you do. But I'm a woman, and I'd like to meet one man as was a man. I know men pretty well; I knew Mr. Ray better than he knew himself. Mr. Ray thought he was doing me an honor to marry me, and I knew he wasn't, and I lived with him fifteen years and never threw it in his face once. I let him talk about his ancestors and I never talked about mine. He thought I didn't have any; he never realized I kept still so as to keep from telling such stories as he did. His ancestors! I'd like to know what sort of ancestors he had! If he'd had any ancestors, he'd have been bound to be descended from them, I should think, in which case he wouldn't have been a Ray. The fact that he and his father called themselves Jared and spelt it Jarrod was enough for me; but to make a long story short I'm going to marry Sammy Adams, and I ran down to tell you that at the same time that I brought the letter."

There was an outbreak of exclamations and then a beginning at congratulations, but Mrs. Ray stopped those.

"I don't want congratulations," she said; "there isn't anything to congratulate me about, for I never tried to get him, so I haven't had a success or anything to be proud of. It's just that the dam is so likely to be going to drown him out that he wants to rent my second floor and pay the rent every first Monday in the month. I'm going to go straight on with my life, and continue to save my own money to finish educating Mr. Ray's children by his second wife. We shall go to church together, and he'll sit with me evenings when I ain't too tired, or when he's nervous over case-knives and swindling. He's going to pay me for all his tailoring and all his hair-cuts, but he's to say when he thinks he needs anything new or it's getting too long. He'll buy our potatoes and chickens of me at the regular price, but I'll furnish my own eggs, like I always have."

"It's settled, then?" said Mrs. O'Neil, with a slight smile.

"Yes, it's settled. I don't believe the dam will ever be dug, but I'll marry Sammy all the same."

"You're right about the dam, Mrs. Ray," Alva said, speaking for the first time. "I don't believe it will ever be built, either; the Falls have too many friends. Besides, there must come a time when the God of All will say to our American Mammon, 'So far and no further shalt thou go,' and I believe the time is now and that the place is here."

"Well, I don't know about all that," said Mrs. Ray; "but Josiah Bates drove the surveyors home yesterday, and he gathered from them that if they built that dam and made that lake, the lake was pretty sure to burst out around back of the Wiley place—that low place you know—and we'd have a new waterfall in through the Wiley cow-pasture, even if we didn't have nothing worse."

"Goodness me!" cried Mrs. O'Neil, "what would the Wileys say to that!"

"I don't know what the Wileys would say to that," said Mrs. Ray; "but it made me know what I'd say to Sammy. Yes, indeed. If there isn't going to be any dam, the summers here are going to go on exactly as they used to, and I've got to have a man to bring up my ice! You know my motto, 'He moves in a mysterious way,' and I can see now why the Lathbuns and the dam both come. I had a dreadful time last summer getting my ice up, and as long as everybody's been betting all along that I'd always marry Sammy some day, I might as well do it now as any time. Yes, indeed."

"You are very sensible," said Alva, rising, "and I'm sure that you will be very happy. I congratulate you." She held out her hand. "Good-bye."

"I'm sorry you're going so soon," said Mrs. Ray, clasping it warmly, "you've meant such a lot of cancellation, and then I've got very fond of you, too."

Alva smiled. "I'm only going out on the bridge just now for a little," she said, turning to Mrs. O'Neil. "I'll be back shortly."

Mrs. O'Neil glanced towards the window. "It's snowing harder and harder," she said; "wrap up warm."

Alva went quietly out. When they were alone, Mrs. Ray shook her head. "She looks bad," she said; "I'm not sure that she didn't care for him, after all. She's got that mooney look. I know just the look. I'd have looked just that way by spring, if I'd taken Gran'ma Benton and the parrot. I'm glad I've decided to marry Sammy, instead."

"You won't take them, then?" asked Mrs. O'Neil.

"No, I couldn't stand Sammy and a parrot at once, and then, too, he might quarrel with the parrot, or Gran'ma Benton might make trouble between Sammy and me. I never allowed any one to make trouble between Mr. Ray and me, and I won't allow trouble this time, either. If I'm going to be unhappy married, I won't marry. That's flat."

"I wonder if Jack knows they're arrested!" said Mrs. O'Neil, thoughtfully.

"I stopped in the bar on purpose," said Mrs. Ray, "I thought he ought to know right away."

"Was he there?" asked the wife.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Ray, calmly, "but I did what I could, Nellie, and nobody can be expected to pass that, you know."

THE BREAKING OF ANOTHER DAY AND WAY

Alva slipped into her cape, and drawing some fur up round her throat, set swiftly forth upon the Long Bridge—for the last time, she told herself.

The snow was falling fast, but not thickly as yet, and she had it in her heart to steal under cover of the fast-approaching twilight to her house, and look upon that also for the last time. Her sorrow was too deep to leave any room to mourn the background of her dream, but the background was consecrated by the dream and she longed to stand once more close to those walls, even if only to sob her heart out alone under the rustle of dead leaves, amidst the fast deepening snow.

There was in her that awful strength that saves one's reason in the first shock of the otherwise unbearable. Years were ahead and yet her heart did not shrink; endless gray duties stretched between their mile-stones, but to her it mattered not. Nothing mattered, she told herself over and over. Life would go on, other lives in especial would go on; their demands would be hers to meet, their cares and troubles, their joys and sorrows would be hers to reflect, but to her personally nothing would—nothing could—matter more. Her unseeing eyes looked out over the gorge; the matchless beauty, for the preservation of which her dead love had fought so hard, came to a blind market now; she could not see, she could not feel, for her life and all that makes life worth living was over.

So she swept on, her dark cape fluttering wide like wings on either side of her steady swiftness. The snow crystals clung to the wool and quickly starred its night with stars, but she saw no night except her own, and noted no stars. "And yet I must not give way too much," she thought suddenly, with a quick stabbing sense of proving unworthy; "if I am what I have told Lassie that one should be—if I am what one who has truly loved should surely be—I shall be strong and live resolutely as he lived, even though I have been so crushed. Pain could not crush his spirit; shall sorrow crush mine? I will be strong."

The letter which she had brought out with her came to her mind then, and she paused and read it. It was from the surgeon and told her what she had lately mistrusted,—that there had never been the slightest chance of moving him, that she had been sent away as a child is banished from a painful scene, and that she had been beguiled as a child is beguiled. She did not resent the truth, she was too big to resent such a truth; but she felt freshly mournful, and the home that was to have been seemed to fade utterly out of her consciousness, leaving her with no desire to ever see it again.

But there was another sheet within the envelope. She took that out, too. It was printed—in a hand that trembled. Her heart contracted as she saw the crooked lines,—so much ran deep between them.

Alva:—I have struggled. I shall not give up. I believe sometimes God has given a new body to serve a needed end. I cannot go. I must come back. Not for your sake. But for theirs—for the sake of those who will never know. If I come, help me again. For you and for me help is the only bond. I am not sure that there is any other that endures. Not in this present world of ours.

She shook a little. Something especially cold and piercing struck to her heart. She raised her eyes quickly, and there, close beside her on the bridge, the dead man stood.

His bright dark eyes looked straight into hers.

"Don't you know who I am?" he said.

She would have fallen but for his quick grasp, and the grasp choked the cry that was rising, for it was the grasp of flesh and of strength.

"Don't you know who I am?" he asked again. "I thought that I saw in your eyes that you knew. I thought that she had described me to you. I'm Lisle Bayard. You wrote to me, you know."

She drew away from him, and leaned heavily against the bridge-rail. If it were true that this were he! A new body to serve a great purpose. If that Mystery that is the rooting of all that is or is to be had been building this man and this hour, and weaving and twisting and shaping both to its ends! She seemed to stand motionless, but within herself she was dizzy and reeling. "He moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform."

"You have freed them?" she said, divining truth with a prescience that startled herself.

"Oh, yes," he said, "I have been to Geneseo. They are free. But you never really believed that I had any interest in them, did you?"

His voice was no strange voice in her ears, nor was his manner that of a stranger. She had to press her temples hard with her two hands. "You are like the man whom I loved," she said; "he—he died yesterday. That was what drew me to her; she described you and said that you loved her."

"Poor thing," he said, simply.

"And that you pursued her," Alva went on; "you can think that I befriended her then. I tried to help her. Because I, too, loved—and hoped."

"It was good of you," he said; "but they are mere adventuresses—not worth your troubling."

"But you have helped them?"

"I? Oh, yes. But," he hesitated; "I am tired of my life," he added suddenly. "I've turned over a new leaf—I've reformed."

"Since when?"

"Since yesterday."

She held hard to the bridge-rail. "Since yesterday," she repeated; "since yesterday?"

"Yes, since yesterday."

Her eyes were staring into his now. "Tell me about it?" she cried, as the starving cry out for food—"at once."

"I don't know about it. I just turned in disgust from myself. It was all in a minute. I wandered about all day and all last night. I tried to drink—you know I drink?—and then all of a sudden I realized what a beast I'd been, and I turned from it all. Something stronger than myself drew me to Geneseo this morning; something stronger yet drew me here; what led me out upon the bridge was strongest of all. I don't know what it all means, but perhaps you do."

For a long minute she looked at him, and then she spoke. "The man who died is guiding you," she said; "I know it is that."

He smiled a little. "Can I trust him?" he asked.

"I think so," she answered; "because his appeal is to your better self. You will learn."

"And you will teach me?" he said, quickly.

She was silent.

"You will teach me?" he repeated.

"I am going home," she said. "I live far from here. I have duties which will chain me there for life. You will learn of him alone. You will be guided; do not fear."

He looked at her, and his eyes blazed suddenly. She shrank back with a cry. "Oh, no—not that—not that!" she exclaimed; "I loved him and he is dead. His work descends on us to do, that is all. All!"

The man, looking down at her with the dead man's eyes, was silent.

"I am not able to talk to you," she said, "I can hardly control my voice. He died yesterday, and to-day you speak to me with his voice. And it is so strange,—your coming. It is all so strange."

"Yes, it is all strange," he said; "but it cannot stop here, you know. The Purpose that has brought this about will not cease to exist now."

She felt herself agitated, unnerved, trembling. She took hold of the bridge-rail again. "The Purpose works for great ends," she said; "we must learn that. I have learned it. Even a little respite from daily life is not allowed, when one has once crossed the border and left self behind. I have had to learn that in a bitter school. For God's sake, lift burdens; do not add to them. And do not make my lot harder than it is to be. You are not him, and I know it. Do not seek friendship with me; it is torture."

"But if I were he," he said, "if I do his work, live towards his goal, accomplish his purposes. Who shall say what soul I bear? I never had a soul till yesterday. I have one now. Where did it come from, this new soul of mine. Perhaps from him. I've read stories like that."

"I cannot bear it," she said, suddenly; "my head refuses to understand. All that I have believed is rolling and crashing around me. Let us say good-by. In a few hours I shall be far away. Oh, I shall be glad—so glad—to go."

"But I shall remain," he declared. "I shall take up the battle, and I shall win his unfinished fight. Let us leave the future wrapped in its mystery. I have been impatient all my life, but now I can wait."

She walked away through the snow.

And then suddenly, as she moved, she felt her steps stayed—she stopped. It was not the man who had stayed her; he was standing where she had left him, behind her—there on the bridge. But she was stopped by a thought; at that thought she turned.

"If you are to live here," she said faltering, her voice quite unlike its usual firm, low purpose,—"if you are to live here, you will want a home. There is a house—"

She paused. Her hand had drawn a key from her pocket, and without further explanation she held it out to him.

He approached and took the key. He asked no question. He spoke no word. They did not even exchange a glance.

Five minutes later a veil of snowflakes divided them, and the gorge lay black between.

What is there to be said further? Nothing unless perhaps the single line that can so fitly begin and end all:

"He moves in a mysterious way."