CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XIXFor, immune from scoff of bachelor chum,Into his kingdom he had come;A rose-strewn path he would henceforth treadThrough the generous will of the kindly dead.—The Legatee“Go on! you’re only fooling! Is that straight now, Hop? What pipe-dream’s all this?”Dr. Musgrave’s incredulous remarks were addressed to Provost-Sergeant Hopgood, the non-com. in charge of the guardroom, who, reclining in an easy chair in the former’s combined study and consulting-room on this September evening, was regarding his host somewhat lugubriously through a blue haze of cigar smoke.“No pipe-dream at all ... kind of wish it was,” he answered, with a slight trace of bitterness in his tones. “’Twas Churchill wisedmeup. He was in from Sabbano today. Appears Ben’s been rushing this girl—or woman, I should say—she’s near thirty, I understand—for quite a time, now.”Musgrave’s air of surprise was slowly succeeded by one of unwilling conviction.“Well, I’ll be——!” he muttered. “I might have tumbled, too!”“Why, what’s up?” said Hopgood eagerly, staring at him now with wide-eyed wonder. “You knew about it all the time, eh? Did Ben tell you? Have you seen her? What’s she like?”Musgrave knocked the ash off his cigar and gazed reflectively out of the open window.“Think I have,” he said. “I was walking down Eighth Avenue with him—day he was in town, last month. ‘Hello!’ he says, pulling up suddenly. ‘Here’s somebody I know from my district!’ And, in that happy, casual, easy way he’s got, he introduced me to a female acquaintance of his, who’d just come out of Black’s jewelry store. She was a great big tall dark girl—finest figure of a woman I think I’ve ever seen. Regular whopper—not fat with it, either. Made you think of Boadicea, or Brittania, somehow, to look at her. She didn’t strike me as being a beauty, exactly, but she’d got a nice kind face. Lots of fun in her, too, and a lady, unmistakably. I rather liked her. We stood there chatting a few minutes, and I remember she told me she was in town for a day or two, shopping. Never a peep from that old fox, Ben, though. You’d never have dreamt there was anything doing from the way he acted then. Everything was as casual as you please. Begad! I’ll soak it to him for putting it over on me like this! That’s if itisright,” he added, with a dubious smile. “Somehow, I can’t credit it, though. Why, he’s the very last man I’d have expected to go dangling after a woman!”“Bet he don’t do much dangling,” remarked the Provost sagely. “Not if I know him. He ain’t that kind. More’n likely it’s the other way round. I’ve known quite a few women get struck on him. Queer beggar! he’s never aloof, rude, or cold, but somehow—he just doesn’t seem tonotice’em at all. P’r’aps that’s what gets ’em. Besides, he’s a proper man to look at, and when he’s penned in a corner with a woman with no chance of escape, he talks in that kind, simple way of his—you know his way, Charley.”Musgrave nodded.There was a long silence, the two men puffing thoughtfully at their cigars and gazing with owlish abstraction at each other.“Didn’t you tell me once that he was engaged to some girl in Jo’burg? When he was with the Chartered Company?” pursued Hopgood.“Yes,” answered Musgrave moodily, “he was.” He paused, and an unfathomable, far-away look crept into his eyes as he gazed absently across at a window in the opposite block that the last rays of the dying sun transformed into a flaming shield of fire. “Beautiful Irish girl named Eileen Regan. She’d a face like a Madonna, I remember. She was a Roman Catholic, and a very devout one at that. Theymighthave been happy together.... I don’t know. It’s hard to predict how these mixed religions’ll turn out. Poor things never got the chance to see, anyway. For she died—died of enteric, just before the war started.”Hopgood eyed the other tentatively for a second or two. “Thisone’s Irish, too, I understand?” he remarked. “Irish-American, anyway.... He seems mighty partial to the Irish. Her name’s O’Malley. They’ll be able to keep a pig and ‘live pretty,’ what?”And, overcome by the thought, he made a comical grimace of despair and sank back into the depths of his luxurious chair, while the roar of the busy street below floated up to their ears.Musgrave cleared his throat. “Mother was an Irishwoman,” he said presently. “Probably that accounts for it. She was a Miss Fitzgerald, of Dublin—sister of that brave, splendid chap, Captain Fitzgerald, who was killed along with poor Fred Burnaby and many others of Stewart’s column, when the square was broken in the fight near the wells at Abou Klea, in the Soudan War of ’eighty-four and five.”He smoked on silently for a space. “Oh, h—l!” he burst out, with a sudden incredulous bitterness that startled even the cynical Hopgood. “Why, that beggar’salwayscome to me before with his troubles. Guess I’m the only one he everdoesconfide in. Many’s the time I’ve acted as Father-confessor and mentor to him. Surely he’d never have passed me up in such a momentous business as this? What saith the poet:“You may carve it on his tombstone,You may cut it on his cardThat a young man married is a young man marred.”The Provost emitted a noisy, snorting laugh.“Yes,” he remarked, with the jeering familiarity of old acquaintance, “and I must say you’re a nice blooming old Gamaliel to act as mentor to anybody, Charley, especially if you expect him to embraceyourself-constituted creed of morality and philosophy. Oh, you’re some Father-confessor, all right, what? Besides, heain’tyoung. That is, unless you call thirty-nine unsophisticated youth. ’Bout time hewasmaking the break. There’s no fun in getting married when you’re old, all same Pope’s ‘January and May.’ He happened to mention it was his birthday to a bunch of us down town when he came in last month. I remember him saying it was his thirty-ninth, because I and Berkley, Mac, and Port stuck him for the drinks on the strength of it. We rushed him into the Alberta bar right away and—”“How about the way he used to hand it out about non-coms and bucks getting married in your Force, too?” interrupted Musgrave, grinning. “‘Look at Beckstall,’ he would say. ‘Look at Corbett,’ and lots of others. ‘Big families—always broke—dragging out their miserable lives in rotten little line detachments—can never afford to send their poor wives away for a change anywhere—they don’tlive—they justexist, from one year’s end to another. That’s all there’s to it! D’you think I’d let myself in for a purgatory likethat?’ and so on. You’ve heard him, Hop, too—lots of times, what?”Hopgood held up his hands appealingly.“Don’t shoot, Colonel!” he said. “I’ll come down!I’mnot holding any particular brief for him. Guess he’s pretty well able to conduct his own defense.Ish ga bibble!—it ain’tourfuneral.”It was worse than useless to argue with Musgrave. All his opponent’s best hits were turned aside by the target of his cynicism and unbelief, while his repartee and sarcasms often came home.“Funny chap!” he resumed musingly. “I think he is just aboutthemost interesting and complex character I’ve ever come across. He’s very much of a man, but at the same time—he’s as simple as a kid in some things. Beggar reads a lot, and he’s as rum in his tastes in that as he is in everything else. Fond of all this old-fashioned stuff. The heighth of his imagination in humor he finds in Balzac’s and Rabelais’ yarns, or Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron,’ and his ideals of pathos in George Eliot’s or Dickens’s tales. Whatever can you do with a man like that?”“Oh, what’s the use of talking?” broke out Hopgood testily:“A fool there was, and he made his prayer—”he quoted, with a low, bitter laugh. “And by gum! it’s me that knows it.”The doctor silently eyed him in cynical abstraction awhile after this outburst, then his grim mouth relaxed into a faint sympathetic grin, and he held out his hand.“Aye!... ‘Even as you and I,’” he finished softly. “Shake!... Isthatwhy you chucked up your commission in India?... I and Ben always thought so,” he continued, as the Provost nodded wearily to his query. “None of our business to get making inquisitions, though.... Well! this sad news has been quite a shock to our nervous systems. Kind of breaks up us ‘Three Musketeers,’ eh?... Looks very much as if we’re going to lose our D’Artagnan. The old chum of your bachelor days is, somehow, never the same again to you after he gets married. S’pose an all-wise Providence has ordained things so for some unfathomable reason. Think we need a little drink to console us.”And he got up with a dreary sighing yawn and, unlocking a small mahogany liquor cellaret, produced a splendid silver and cut-glass “Tantalus.”“What’s yours, Hop?” he inquired. “Brandy, or ‘Scotch’?”Leaving these two well-meaning, if cynical, worthies to console each other with the bitter philosophy which retrospection of past irremedial misfortunes has caused many better, and worse, men than them to revert to, let us return to the detachment at Cherry Creek, where at this particular moment the object of their commiseration is leaning back in his favorite chair, with his head resting in its customary position against the leopard-skin kaross. Tired out by a long and uneventful four days’ patrol, Ellis lit a pipe and gazed wearily out through the open door into the gathering dusk. Gradually, his mind, still obsessed with the vague memories of brands of missing cattle and horses and the usual round of more or less petty complaints, strayed back to the Trainors’ establishment.He found himself wondering how Mary was, and what had caused her to be so strangely silent and abstracted during that last homeward ride together from Lone Butte. At supper time, too, he mused, she had been in the same mood ... had hardly spoken to him at all? Could it be that—?And, not unmixed with an unfamiliar, slightly self-conscious, feeling of shame, came the sudden thought that shemighthave grown to regard his attentions in a more serious light than mere frank camaraderie. And, if that was so—well—she suremustbe thinking him a proper “laggard in love.” Not much of the “Young Lochinvar” about him, he reflected bitterly. Anyway, it certainly didn’t seem very gentlemanly behavior on his part, or the right thing, exactly, to run around after a girl—like he undoubtedly had, to a certain extent—with Mary, and then keep her “hanging on the fence” indefinitely, as it were, like that. Surely the Trainors must be wondering not a little, too. How the deuce was it that he had never thought of his conduct in that light before? What a simple fool he had been not to have “tumbled” to all this earlier? Should he chance it? She could but “turn him down” like she had the rest—some of whose very palpable discomfiture he had been a casual and not altogether disinterested witness on more than one occasion.And then, on the other hand, was hejustifiedin askinganywoman to share the lot that he had so often bitterly inveighed against as being utterly insufficient, unsuitable, and contrary to all his ideals of conjugal happiness?His somewhat gloomy reflections were suddenly disturbed by the sounds of an approaching rider, who presently drew up outside the open door.“Oh, Sargint!” came the gruff bark of Gallagher; “yu’re back, eh? Bin down for me mail, so I brung yores along.”“Good man! much obliged. Come on in, Barney!” Ellis called out.And the rancher, swinging down from the saddle, dropped his lines and slouched in with a packet of letters in his hand.“Nothin’ doin’, an’ nobody around for yu’ while yu’ was away,” he remarked, dropping into a chair and lighting his pipe. “Gosh, but it’s a warm night for this time o’ year!”The Sergeant reached out for, and began leisurely to open up his mail. Most of it bore the regimental stamp of L Division. Returned crime reports, with caustic, blue-pencilled marginal comments in the O.C.’s caligraphy, requesting certain omitted particulars therein. Circulars respecting stolen stock, descriptions of persons “wanted” for various crimes, drastic orders emanating, primarily, from Headquarters at Regina, regarding new innovations to be observed in certain phases of detachment duty, etc., the monthly “General Orders,” and so on. But presently a somewhat large envelope, addressed in a clerk’s hand and bearing an English stamp and the London postmark, attracted his attention. Whoever could be writinghimfrom the Old Country? he wondered. The only letters he ever received fromtherewere mostly from Major Carlton, and this wasn’thishandwriting.With a vague feeling of uneasiness, he turned it over in his hand irresolutely for a moment, then opened it. It contained a closed envelope and a letter which bore the heading of a London legal firm. Mechanically he smoothed this latter communication out and began to read the epoch-making document that was destined later to create for him a new world and to transform his desert into a paradise.Dear Sir,—We are charged with the melancholy duty of breaking to you the news of the death of your old friend, Major Gilbert Carlton, on the 20th ult. Our late respected client, although possessing all the outward appearances of being a hale, robust old soldier, had for many years suffered from what physicians term an “aortic aneurism,” the origin of which was probably the result of the privations and exposure endured by him in the various campaigns that he had gone through. The final bursting of this “aneurism” was the cause of his sudden death.Suffering from such an ailment, it is therefore not surprising that he apparently realized of late that his end might come upon him unexpectedly at any moment of his advanced age. This presentiment he recently confided to us, during one of his last business visits. The enclosed letter he left in our care, charging us—in case of his decease—to forward it immediately to you.For many years he frequently spoke of you to us with great regard and feeling; referring to you always, as “The boy, Ellis,” or “Hisboy,” in tones which moved us not a little, evincing as he did, such a kindly love and esteem for you. He was seventy-five years of age, and, as you are of course aware, a bachelor all his life, possessing only distant relatives. Although not by any means a recluse, and enjoying life to its full in his old-fashioned, cheery way at his estate—Biddlecombe Hall, in Devonshire, surrounded by many of his old soldier friends—he was not an extravagant man and the revenues of the said estate have been steadily accumulating for many years. This magnificent property, with all revenues thereof had been left to him under the will of his cousin, the late Lord Baring, his nearest relative.We enclose a copy of the testament, by which you will see that (with the exception of the estate, which, re a stipulated clause in Lord Baring’s will, has reverted at the death of the last incumbent to the Morley Institute, to be used as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, and a few bequests to old servants) he has bequeathed to you the great bulk of his money. We hold at your disposal, a sum (discounting probate dues) approximately nearly ninety thousand pounds.We beg to congratulate you on the acquisition of this considerable fortune. Thinking that you might desire to relinquish your present occupation at once, and not knowing how you are financially situated, we enclose a credit for five hundred pounds, for which please sign the accompanying receipt. Kindly communicate with us at your earliest convenience.We are, dear sir, yours truly,Eaton and Smith.Dazedly Ellis glanced through the attached copy of the will and reread the letter through. Gallagher, who had been intently watching his face throughout, vaguely aware from the Sergeant’s unconcealed agitation that some tidings of an unusual character had been received, inquired casually:“Why, what’s up, Sargint? Hope yu’ ain’t bin a-gettin’ bad news?”Ellis regarded his interlocutor absently a moment or two, and then his preoccupied gaze flickered away again through the open door into the darkness of the night.“It’s both goodandbad, Barney,” he answered slowly. “I’ll tell yu’—later.”Choking back many conflicting emotions, he now picked up the previously mentioned closed letter which, he perceived, was addressed to him in his old friend’s handwriting. With a feeling almost of awed reverence, he broke the heavy wax seal, stamped with the Major’s own signet ring and, drawing out the letter, began to read a communication that was to remain indelibly in his memory forever:My Dear Lad,—I take up my pen to write this—the last letter you will ever receive from me—while I am still of clear mind, and in possession of all my faculties. Life is very uncertain at all times, and especially so in the case of an old fellow like me. I have got what the doctors call an “aneurism,” Ellis, and have had it for many years now. A man cannot expect to come through the hardships of such campaigns as the Afghan and Soudan, unscathed. I was at Charasiah, Kabul, Maiwand, and Tel-el-Kebir, my boy, and I tell you I have worked, bled, starved and suffered above a bit in my time. My incubus has been troubling me greatly of late and I cannot mistake its meaning. Dr. Forsyth has warned me that it may burst at any time now. Many thanks for granting my wish in sending me that photograph of yourself in your Mounted Police uniform. I look at it often. For though externally it depicts one whom I believe to be a soldier, and a man in word, deed, and appearance, in it I seem to see again the face of a boy that I once loved, because—he had his mother’s dear, dear eyes.Yes, Ellis, my lad!... Now that I know my end is not far off, I feel that I cannot die peaceably without telling you what has been to me a sacred secret since I was in my thirties.It must have been in ’sixty-two, or thereabouts, when I first met your mother, in Dublin. The regiment that I and your father were in lay at Athlone, then. I grew to love her. Loved her with a passion that I fancy comes to few men, and my supreme desire was to be able to call her my wife. I suppose the Almighty willed it otherwise, though, and it was not to be.... For John Benton, your father, came along, my boy, and he was a big man, and a strong man, and a handsome man, with a bold masterful, loving way with him that took her by storm, as it were, and I—I faded into insignificance beside such a splendid personality as his. He won her from me, but that fact could not kill my love; all outward exhibition of which, though, I have guarded well. My Dear Lad I have worn the willow decently, I hope, as an honest English gentleman should, and have borne my cross patiently through the long, weary years that have passed since then.With the recollection ofsucha woman as your mother lingering still in my remembrance,—whose dear face—God grant, I may behold again, shortly—can you wonder that none other has come into my life to take her place, and that I have been true to the memory of my first, and only love. You alone of your family havehereyes, and impulsive, loving ways, and for those reasons were always my favorite—headstrong lad, though you were.On the subject of your estrangement from your family, I have nothing to say, beyond that I consider that it is a matter which lies entirely between your own conscience—and God. You were sorely tried, I know.I am leaving to you the greater portion of my money. It is my desire, as through it, I hope, your future path in life will be smoothed considerably. May it ultimately bring you the happiness of enabling you to marry a good, true, loving woman, and of living henceforth, in that station of life to which you properly belong.Do not grieve for me my lad!... Best think of me just as a kindly old soldier, at the end of his service, who was ready and willing to go to his rest—only awaiting “The Last Post” to be sounded. I have not lived altogether unhappily. I have drunk deeply of the joys of life in my time, and I possess many good and true friends. My days, thank God, have been, for the most part, passed cleanly as aman—in the open, breathing His fresh air. Through it I have had ever your dear mother’s memory to keep my conscience clear, and have striven steadfastly to adhere and live up to, most all, I trust, of the precepts that are embodied in the formula, “An officer, and a gentleman.” As in the sunset of my life I sit alone in my chair in the twilight, dreaming of bygone days, it seems to me that I can see the shining welcome of many long-lost and well-remembered faces. They come and go, and I love them well enough, butone—especially beloved above the rest is with me always.But why speak ofher?... Now that she is again so near to me—now that I go, I hope, whereshehas gone!... The guiding-light of the soul of her true womanhood is shining brighter and brighter in the gloom ahead of me still, and ofherwill my last thoughts be on this side of Eternity.And now! ... Ellis, my boy! my boy! ... One last “Good-by!” ... God bless you, and may your life be a long and happy one.I am, believe me, to the last.Your old friend,Gilbert Carlton.A smothered sob burst from Ellis, and the letter fluttered from his grasp to the floor. Gallagher, still watching him curiously, repeated his former query:“What’s up, Sargint? Hope nothin’s—”Ellis interrupted him huskily, but not unkindly.“Get out, Barney!” he said. “Don’t talk to me just now! I’ll tell yu’—sometime! Beat it! there’s a good chap. I just wanta be alone.”And, with one last lingering look of silent, wondering sympathy, the rancher arose and departed slowly into the night.Overcome with his thoughts, Ellis sat for a long time motionless; then, mechanically groping for the letter again, he reread it. Its simple pathos touched him strangely as the awe-inspiring significance of the long, patient struggle of that faithful old heart—stilled now, alas, forever—began to creep into his dazed brain. He raised his swimming eyes to the portrait of the gentle woman, the memory of whose beauty and kind, sweet personality had been the good angel alike to poor old Major Carlton and himself throughout both their strenuous and sin-tempted lives.Not in vain had been her early teachings and loving, self-sacrificing patience and forbearance, while he was yet a wilful, headstrong youngster. As, gently, and with a mother’s tact, she strove to curb his faults and instil into him—through love, and love alone—truth, honesty, and the main principles of right and wrong.Not in vain had she entered into her rest and, as an angel in the stead of a beautiful, pure, true-hearted woman, interceded for the souls of both men in their tempestuous journey through life.Long and wistfully the Sergeant gazed into the grave, sweet eyes and proud, clean-cut features—so like his own—and his stern bronzed face became softened and glorified with a wave of ineffable filial devotion too sacred for words.“Mother!” he whispered brokenly. “Mother! Oh, Mother!” and dropped his head upon his outstretched arms across the table.But grief—no matter however sincere and true—to the average healthy man is but a transient emotion. Ellis was no dissembler, and sadly though he mourned the loss of his old friend, as the first transports of his sorrow subsided and he became calmer, a slow, dim realization of the tremendous possibilities of his good fortune began to flood his mind.For to him it meant—freedom, at last, from all the unavoidable, petty, sordid worries connected with the calling that he followed. No more gloomy outlooks upon life in general, or pessimistic forebodings arising from the consciousness of straightened means. Free at last to wander around the earth at will and visit all its beauty spots that he had read or heard about. Free to enjoy all the pleasures of the world that money can command. He was still only a comparatively young man, strong and active far beyond the average.And, above all, it meant—and the very thought of his presumption stirred him strangely and caused a mighty wave of long-pent-up love to surge through his heart—perhaps also it meant—Mary.So the joy of life filled him and transfigured his scarred, somber face with a dreamy expression of happiness that lies beyond the power of mere words to adequately describe. No more was the ideal life that he had so often—ah! how often?—pictured longingly to himself in his fits of morbid, spiritless depression, only a monotonous repetition of hopeless empty dreams. It actually lay now within his power to gratify his heart’s desires to their fullest extent.And then—to the weary man in that humble abode, which was, nevertheless, all that he could call “Home,” there appeared a wondrous fantasy which, in its awe-inspiring, majestic grandeur, might have been likened, almost, unto some allegory, or a scene in the Revelation. With mind absolutely, utterly detached from all things material, he sat there motionless, as if in a dream, and it began to float before his far-away eyes like a filmy roseate mirage.For, in his exalted imagination, it seemed to him that he was standing upon the shores of a great sparkling crystal sea, as it were, in the first faint flush of a radiant dawn. Purple, crimson, saffron-yellow and turquoise, the morning lights stole in succession across the sleeping world, and slowly—slowly, in the mystic East—the flashing rays of a magnificent sunrise began to creep over the rim of the horizon, transforming the gleaming waste of waters into a vast expanse of golden flame.And, as he gazed entranced at this gorgeous spectacle, suddenly he grew conscious that he was not alone. Turning, he became aware of the figure of a woman kneeling on the ground hard by, with her head bowed in an attitude suggestive of sorrowful abandon. Her form, though the face was turned from him and partly shrouded by her huge masses of dark, disordered hair, seemed vaguely familiar; and he found himself engaged in idle speculation as to her identity. Something in her posture of dejection instinctively stirred in him a fleeting memory of Thomas Moore’s beautiful poem. “Paradise and the Peri,” the poor Peri humbly, yet vainly, craving admission into Paradise. Vaguely and disconnectedly, some of the lines wandered into his mind:One morn a Peri at the gateOf Eden stood, disconsolate;The glorious Angel who was keepingThe Gates of Light beheld her weeping;Awhile he contemplated the woman with a great pity in his heart, and was about to draw nigh and comfort her when all at once his impulse was checked and he remained spellbound in mute amazement.For, seemingly fromnowhere, a transcendentally glorious voice—that sounded not of this earth—suddenly arose in the stillness around them. Pure, peaceful, unutterably sweet, far beyond this world and its works, the golden notes floated forth into the hush of the opal dawn, uplifting the hearts of the listeners on the wings of sound—verily to Heaven’s gate:“O Rest in the Lord! wait patiently for Him!And He shall give thee—He shall give thee—O He shall give thee thy heart’s desire!”The eternal solace of the weary and heavy-laden, the Divine appeal to all poor struggling souls rose and fell, finally melting away into nothingness, save where the deep, cloister-like silence flung back a faint far echo. Beside the bowed female figure there became visible a vague shimmeringsomethingwhich, almost imperceptibly, began to assume the outlines of a human form. Disturbed strangely at what he knew not, the wayward, reckless soul of Ellis Benton became filled with a great and reverential awe.He sank to his knees and bowed his head. When, fearfully, he dared to raise it again, his eyes beheldoneclad in shining raiment, about whom there clung a halo of radiance. Slowly the glistening form turned and a cry of wonderment and adoration burst from his lips. For, lo!—it seemed to him thatonce morehe looked upon the face of his long-dead love—Eileen Regan.Motionless, she gazed down upon him long and earnestly, with gravely sweet, kind eyes; then, stooping low, she embraced the sorrowing woman tenderly, and kissed her on the brow, bidding her be of good cheer and calling her “Sister.” Presently, drawing herself erect, she uplifted her heavenly voice again, and there rang forth—as he well remembered her singing it inlife, one never-to-be-forgotten Christmas morn, in that little Catholic Church in far-off Johannesburg—“In Excelsis Gloria”:“Glory to God in the Highest!And on earth peace, goodwill towards men!”She bent and kissed the woman a last farewell. Then, raising her arms in holy benediction, she slowly became ashade, as before, unfolding her wings and floating away diaphonously into the silvery mists of the early morn.The kneeling woman then arose and, turning, came towards him swiftly. A tall, stately figure of a woman, with a kind, strong, sweet face; the tumbled masses of her glossy, raven-hued hair all floating and rippling about her regal shoulders and white columnar throat.Near she drew to him—nearer. She stretched out her bare rounded arms to him with a little happy loving cry as she smiled into his eyes, and he saw the splendor and glory of the world in hers.While, far away in his ears, rang the echo of his own voice calling upon a woman’s name—wonderingly, passionately—“Mary!... Mary!... Mary!...”

For, immune from scoff of bachelor chum,Into his kingdom he had come;A rose-strewn path he would henceforth treadThrough the generous will of the kindly dead.—The Legatee

For, immune from scoff of bachelor chum,

Into his kingdom he had come;

A rose-strewn path he would henceforth tread

Through the generous will of the kindly dead.

—The Legatee

“Go on! you’re only fooling! Is that straight now, Hop? What pipe-dream’s all this?”

Dr. Musgrave’s incredulous remarks were addressed to Provost-Sergeant Hopgood, the non-com. in charge of the guardroom, who, reclining in an easy chair in the former’s combined study and consulting-room on this September evening, was regarding his host somewhat lugubriously through a blue haze of cigar smoke.

“No pipe-dream at all ... kind of wish it was,” he answered, with a slight trace of bitterness in his tones. “’Twas Churchill wisedmeup. He was in from Sabbano today. Appears Ben’s been rushing this girl—or woman, I should say—she’s near thirty, I understand—for quite a time, now.”

Musgrave’s air of surprise was slowly succeeded by one of unwilling conviction.

“Well, I’ll be——!” he muttered. “I might have tumbled, too!”

“Why, what’s up?” said Hopgood eagerly, staring at him now with wide-eyed wonder. “You knew about it all the time, eh? Did Ben tell you? Have you seen her? What’s she like?”

Musgrave knocked the ash off his cigar and gazed reflectively out of the open window.

“Think I have,” he said. “I was walking down Eighth Avenue with him—day he was in town, last month. ‘Hello!’ he says, pulling up suddenly. ‘Here’s somebody I know from my district!’ And, in that happy, casual, easy way he’s got, he introduced me to a female acquaintance of his, who’d just come out of Black’s jewelry store. She was a great big tall dark girl—finest figure of a woman I think I’ve ever seen. Regular whopper—not fat with it, either. Made you think of Boadicea, or Brittania, somehow, to look at her. She didn’t strike me as being a beauty, exactly, but she’d got a nice kind face. Lots of fun in her, too, and a lady, unmistakably. I rather liked her. We stood there chatting a few minutes, and I remember she told me she was in town for a day or two, shopping. Never a peep from that old fox, Ben, though. You’d never have dreamt there was anything doing from the way he acted then. Everything was as casual as you please. Begad! I’ll soak it to him for putting it over on me like this! That’s if itisright,” he added, with a dubious smile. “Somehow, I can’t credit it, though. Why, he’s the very last man I’d have expected to go dangling after a woman!”

“Bet he don’t do much dangling,” remarked the Provost sagely. “Not if I know him. He ain’t that kind. More’n likely it’s the other way round. I’ve known quite a few women get struck on him. Queer beggar! he’s never aloof, rude, or cold, but somehow—he just doesn’t seem tonotice’em at all. P’r’aps that’s what gets ’em. Besides, he’s a proper man to look at, and when he’s penned in a corner with a woman with no chance of escape, he talks in that kind, simple way of his—you know his way, Charley.”

Musgrave nodded.

There was a long silence, the two men puffing thoughtfully at their cigars and gazing with owlish abstraction at each other.

“Didn’t you tell me once that he was engaged to some girl in Jo’burg? When he was with the Chartered Company?” pursued Hopgood.

“Yes,” answered Musgrave moodily, “he was.” He paused, and an unfathomable, far-away look crept into his eyes as he gazed absently across at a window in the opposite block that the last rays of the dying sun transformed into a flaming shield of fire. “Beautiful Irish girl named Eileen Regan. She’d a face like a Madonna, I remember. She was a Roman Catholic, and a very devout one at that. Theymighthave been happy together.... I don’t know. It’s hard to predict how these mixed religions’ll turn out. Poor things never got the chance to see, anyway. For she died—died of enteric, just before the war started.”

Hopgood eyed the other tentatively for a second or two. “Thisone’s Irish, too, I understand?” he remarked. “Irish-American, anyway.... He seems mighty partial to the Irish. Her name’s O’Malley. They’ll be able to keep a pig and ‘live pretty,’ what?”

And, overcome by the thought, he made a comical grimace of despair and sank back into the depths of his luxurious chair, while the roar of the busy street below floated up to their ears.

Musgrave cleared his throat. “Mother was an Irishwoman,” he said presently. “Probably that accounts for it. She was a Miss Fitzgerald, of Dublin—sister of that brave, splendid chap, Captain Fitzgerald, who was killed along with poor Fred Burnaby and many others of Stewart’s column, when the square was broken in the fight near the wells at Abou Klea, in the Soudan War of ’eighty-four and five.”

He smoked on silently for a space. “Oh, h—l!” he burst out, with a sudden incredulous bitterness that startled even the cynical Hopgood. “Why, that beggar’salwayscome to me before with his troubles. Guess I’m the only one he everdoesconfide in. Many’s the time I’ve acted as Father-confessor and mentor to him. Surely he’d never have passed me up in such a momentous business as this? What saith the poet:

“You may carve it on his tombstone,You may cut it on his cardThat a young man married is a young man marred.”

“You may carve it on his tombstone,

You may cut it on his card

That a young man married is a young man marred.”

The Provost emitted a noisy, snorting laugh.

“Yes,” he remarked, with the jeering familiarity of old acquaintance, “and I must say you’re a nice blooming old Gamaliel to act as mentor to anybody, Charley, especially if you expect him to embraceyourself-constituted creed of morality and philosophy. Oh, you’re some Father-confessor, all right, what? Besides, heain’tyoung. That is, unless you call thirty-nine unsophisticated youth. ’Bout time hewasmaking the break. There’s no fun in getting married when you’re old, all same Pope’s ‘January and May.’ He happened to mention it was his birthday to a bunch of us down town when he came in last month. I remember him saying it was his thirty-ninth, because I and Berkley, Mac, and Port stuck him for the drinks on the strength of it. We rushed him into the Alberta bar right away and—”

“How about the way he used to hand it out about non-coms and bucks getting married in your Force, too?” interrupted Musgrave, grinning. “‘Look at Beckstall,’ he would say. ‘Look at Corbett,’ and lots of others. ‘Big families—always broke—dragging out their miserable lives in rotten little line detachments—can never afford to send their poor wives away for a change anywhere—they don’tlive—they justexist, from one year’s end to another. That’s all there’s to it! D’you think I’d let myself in for a purgatory likethat?’ and so on. You’ve heard him, Hop, too—lots of times, what?”

Hopgood held up his hands appealingly.

“Don’t shoot, Colonel!” he said. “I’ll come down!I’mnot holding any particular brief for him. Guess he’s pretty well able to conduct his own defense.Ish ga bibble!—it ain’tourfuneral.”

It was worse than useless to argue with Musgrave. All his opponent’s best hits were turned aside by the target of his cynicism and unbelief, while his repartee and sarcasms often came home.

“Funny chap!” he resumed musingly. “I think he is just aboutthemost interesting and complex character I’ve ever come across. He’s very much of a man, but at the same time—he’s as simple as a kid in some things. Beggar reads a lot, and he’s as rum in his tastes in that as he is in everything else. Fond of all this old-fashioned stuff. The heighth of his imagination in humor he finds in Balzac’s and Rabelais’ yarns, or Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron,’ and his ideals of pathos in George Eliot’s or Dickens’s tales. Whatever can you do with a man like that?”

“Oh, what’s the use of talking?” broke out Hopgood testily:

“A fool there was, and he made his prayer—”

he quoted, with a low, bitter laugh. “And by gum! it’s me that knows it.”

The doctor silently eyed him in cynical abstraction awhile after this outburst, then his grim mouth relaxed into a faint sympathetic grin, and he held out his hand.

“Aye!... ‘Even as you and I,’” he finished softly. “Shake!... Isthatwhy you chucked up your commission in India?... I and Ben always thought so,” he continued, as the Provost nodded wearily to his query. “None of our business to get making inquisitions, though.... Well! this sad news has been quite a shock to our nervous systems. Kind of breaks up us ‘Three Musketeers,’ eh?... Looks very much as if we’re going to lose our D’Artagnan. The old chum of your bachelor days is, somehow, never the same again to you after he gets married. S’pose an all-wise Providence has ordained things so for some unfathomable reason. Think we need a little drink to console us.”

And he got up with a dreary sighing yawn and, unlocking a small mahogany liquor cellaret, produced a splendid silver and cut-glass “Tantalus.”

“What’s yours, Hop?” he inquired. “Brandy, or ‘Scotch’?”

Leaving these two well-meaning, if cynical, worthies to console each other with the bitter philosophy which retrospection of past irremedial misfortunes has caused many better, and worse, men than them to revert to, let us return to the detachment at Cherry Creek, where at this particular moment the object of their commiseration is leaning back in his favorite chair, with his head resting in its customary position against the leopard-skin kaross. Tired out by a long and uneventful four days’ patrol, Ellis lit a pipe and gazed wearily out through the open door into the gathering dusk. Gradually, his mind, still obsessed with the vague memories of brands of missing cattle and horses and the usual round of more or less petty complaints, strayed back to the Trainors’ establishment.

He found himself wondering how Mary was, and what had caused her to be so strangely silent and abstracted during that last homeward ride together from Lone Butte. At supper time, too, he mused, she had been in the same mood ... had hardly spoken to him at all? Could it be that—?

And, not unmixed with an unfamiliar, slightly self-conscious, feeling of shame, came the sudden thought that shemighthave grown to regard his attentions in a more serious light than mere frank camaraderie. And, if that was so—well—she suremustbe thinking him a proper “laggard in love.” Not much of the “Young Lochinvar” about him, he reflected bitterly. Anyway, it certainly didn’t seem very gentlemanly behavior on his part, or the right thing, exactly, to run around after a girl—like he undoubtedly had, to a certain extent—with Mary, and then keep her “hanging on the fence” indefinitely, as it were, like that. Surely the Trainors must be wondering not a little, too. How the deuce was it that he had never thought of his conduct in that light before? What a simple fool he had been not to have “tumbled” to all this earlier? Should he chance it? She could but “turn him down” like she had the rest—some of whose very palpable discomfiture he had been a casual and not altogether disinterested witness on more than one occasion.

And then, on the other hand, was hejustifiedin askinganywoman to share the lot that he had so often bitterly inveighed against as being utterly insufficient, unsuitable, and contrary to all his ideals of conjugal happiness?

His somewhat gloomy reflections were suddenly disturbed by the sounds of an approaching rider, who presently drew up outside the open door.

“Oh, Sargint!” came the gruff bark of Gallagher; “yu’re back, eh? Bin down for me mail, so I brung yores along.”

“Good man! much obliged. Come on in, Barney!” Ellis called out.

And the rancher, swinging down from the saddle, dropped his lines and slouched in with a packet of letters in his hand.

“Nothin’ doin’, an’ nobody around for yu’ while yu’ was away,” he remarked, dropping into a chair and lighting his pipe. “Gosh, but it’s a warm night for this time o’ year!”

The Sergeant reached out for, and began leisurely to open up his mail. Most of it bore the regimental stamp of L Division. Returned crime reports, with caustic, blue-pencilled marginal comments in the O.C.’s caligraphy, requesting certain omitted particulars therein. Circulars respecting stolen stock, descriptions of persons “wanted” for various crimes, drastic orders emanating, primarily, from Headquarters at Regina, regarding new innovations to be observed in certain phases of detachment duty, etc., the monthly “General Orders,” and so on. But presently a somewhat large envelope, addressed in a clerk’s hand and bearing an English stamp and the London postmark, attracted his attention. Whoever could be writinghimfrom the Old Country? he wondered. The only letters he ever received fromtherewere mostly from Major Carlton, and this wasn’thishandwriting.

With a vague feeling of uneasiness, he turned it over in his hand irresolutely for a moment, then opened it. It contained a closed envelope and a letter which bore the heading of a London legal firm. Mechanically he smoothed this latter communication out and began to read the epoch-making document that was destined later to create for him a new world and to transform his desert into a paradise.

Dear Sir,—We are charged with the melancholy duty of breaking to you the news of the death of your old friend, Major Gilbert Carlton, on the 20th ult. Our late respected client, although possessing all the outward appearances of being a hale, robust old soldier, had for many years suffered from what physicians term an “aortic aneurism,” the origin of which was probably the result of the privations and exposure endured by him in the various campaigns that he had gone through. The final bursting of this “aneurism” was the cause of his sudden death.Suffering from such an ailment, it is therefore not surprising that he apparently realized of late that his end might come upon him unexpectedly at any moment of his advanced age. This presentiment he recently confided to us, during one of his last business visits. The enclosed letter he left in our care, charging us—in case of his decease—to forward it immediately to you.For many years he frequently spoke of you to us with great regard and feeling; referring to you always, as “The boy, Ellis,” or “Hisboy,” in tones which moved us not a little, evincing as he did, such a kindly love and esteem for you. He was seventy-five years of age, and, as you are of course aware, a bachelor all his life, possessing only distant relatives. Although not by any means a recluse, and enjoying life to its full in his old-fashioned, cheery way at his estate—Biddlecombe Hall, in Devonshire, surrounded by many of his old soldier friends—he was not an extravagant man and the revenues of the said estate have been steadily accumulating for many years. This magnificent property, with all revenues thereof had been left to him under the will of his cousin, the late Lord Baring, his nearest relative.We enclose a copy of the testament, by which you will see that (with the exception of the estate, which, re a stipulated clause in Lord Baring’s will, has reverted at the death of the last incumbent to the Morley Institute, to be used as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, and a few bequests to old servants) he has bequeathed to you the great bulk of his money. We hold at your disposal, a sum (discounting probate dues) approximately nearly ninety thousand pounds.We beg to congratulate you on the acquisition of this considerable fortune. Thinking that you might desire to relinquish your present occupation at once, and not knowing how you are financially situated, we enclose a credit for five hundred pounds, for which please sign the accompanying receipt. Kindly communicate with us at your earliest convenience.We are, dear sir, yours truly,Eaton and Smith.

Suffering from such an ailment, it is therefore not surprising that he apparently realized of late that his end might come upon him unexpectedly at any moment of his advanced age. This presentiment he recently confided to us, during one of his last business visits. The enclosed letter he left in our care, charging us—in case of his decease—to forward it immediately to you.

For many years he frequently spoke of you to us with great regard and feeling; referring to you always, as “The boy, Ellis,” or “Hisboy,” in tones which moved us not a little, evincing as he did, such a kindly love and esteem for you. He was seventy-five years of age, and, as you are of course aware, a bachelor all his life, possessing only distant relatives. Although not by any means a recluse, and enjoying life to its full in his old-fashioned, cheery way at his estate—Biddlecombe Hall, in Devonshire, surrounded by many of his old soldier friends—he was not an extravagant man and the revenues of the said estate have been steadily accumulating for many years. This magnificent property, with all revenues thereof had been left to him under the will of his cousin, the late Lord Baring, his nearest relative.

We enclose a copy of the testament, by which you will see that (with the exception of the estate, which, re a stipulated clause in Lord Baring’s will, has reverted at the death of the last incumbent to the Morley Institute, to be used as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, and a few bequests to old servants) he has bequeathed to you the great bulk of his money. We hold at your disposal, a sum (discounting probate dues) approximately nearly ninety thousand pounds.

We beg to congratulate you on the acquisition of this considerable fortune. Thinking that you might desire to relinquish your present occupation at once, and not knowing how you are financially situated, we enclose a credit for five hundred pounds, for which please sign the accompanying receipt. Kindly communicate with us at your earliest convenience.

We are, dear sir, yours truly,Eaton and Smith.

We are, dear sir, yours truly,

Eaton and Smith.

Dazedly Ellis glanced through the attached copy of the will and reread the letter through. Gallagher, who had been intently watching his face throughout, vaguely aware from the Sergeant’s unconcealed agitation that some tidings of an unusual character had been received, inquired casually:

“Why, what’s up, Sargint? Hope yu’ ain’t bin a-gettin’ bad news?”

Ellis regarded his interlocutor absently a moment or two, and then his preoccupied gaze flickered away again through the open door into the darkness of the night.

“It’s both goodandbad, Barney,” he answered slowly. “I’ll tell yu’—later.”

Choking back many conflicting emotions, he now picked up the previously mentioned closed letter which, he perceived, was addressed to him in his old friend’s handwriting. With a feeling almost of awed reverence, he broke the heavy wax seal, stamped with the Major’s own signet ring and, drawing out the letter, began to read a communication that was to remain indelibly in his memory forever:

My Dear Lad,—I take up my pen to write this—the last letter you will ever receive from me—while I am still of clear mind, and in possession of all my faculties. Life is very uncertain at all times, and especially so in the case of an old fellow like me. I have got what the doctors call an “aneurism,” Ellis, and have had it for many years now. A man cannot expect to come through the hardships of such campaigns as the Afghan and Soudan, unscathed. I was at Charasiah, Kabul, Maiwand, and Tel-el-Kebir, my boy, and I tell you I have worked, bled, starved and suffered above a bit in my time. My incubus has been troubling me greatly of late and I cannot mistake its meaning. Dr. Forsyth has warned me that it may burst at any time now. Many thanks for granting my wish in sending me that photograph of yourself in your Mounted Police uniform. I look at it often. For though externally it depicts one whom I believe to be a soldier, and a man in word, deed, and appearance, in it I seem to see again the face of a boy that I once loved, because—he had his mother’s dear, dear eyes.Yes, Ellis, my lad!... Now that I know my end is not far off, I feel that I cannot die peaceably without telling you what has been to me a sacred secret since I was in my thirties.It must have been in ’sixty-two, or thereabouts, when I first met your mother, in Dublin. The regiment that I and your father were in lay at Athlone, then. I grew to love her. Loved her with a passion that I fancy comes to few men, and my supreme desire was to be able to call her my wife. I suppose the Almighty willed it otherwise, though, and it was not to be.... For John Benton, your father, came along, my boy, and he was a big man, and a strong man, and a handsome man, with a bold masterful, loving way with him that took her by storm, as it were, and I—I faded into insignificance beside such a splendid personality as his. He won her from me, but that fact could not kill my love; all outward exhibition of which, though, I have guarded well. My Dear Lad I have worn the willow decently, I hope, as an honest English gentleman should, and have borne my cross patiently through the long, weary years that have passed since then.With the recollection ofsucha woman as your mother lingering still in my remembrance,—whose dear face—God grant, I may behold again, shortly—can you wonder that none other has come into my life to take her place, and that I have been true to the memory of my first, and only love. You alone of your family havehereyes, and impulsive, loving ways, and for those reasons were always my favorite—headstrong lad, though you were.On the subject of your estrangement from your family, I have nothing to say, beyond that I consider that it is a matter which lies entirely between your own conscience—and God. You were sorely tried, I know.I am leaving to you the greater portion of my money. It is my desire, as through it, I hope, your future path in life will be smoothed considerably. May it ultimately bring you the happiness of enabling you to marry a good, true, loving woman, and of living henceforth, in that station of life to which you properly belong.Do not grieve for me my lad!... Best think of me just as a kindly old soldier, at the end of his service, who was ready and willing to go to his rest—only awaiting “The Last Post” to be sounded. I have not lived altogether unhappily. I have drunk deeply of the joys of life in my time, and I possess many good and true friends. My days, thank God, have been, for the most part, passed cleanly as aman—in the open, breathing His fresh air. Through it I have had ever your dear mother’s memory to keep my conscience clear, and have striven steadfastly to adhere and live up to, most all, I trust, of the precepts that are embodied in the formula, “An officer, and a gentleman.” As in the sunset of my life I sit alone in my chair in the twilight, dreaming of bygone days, it seems to me that I can see the shining welcome of many long-lost and well-remembered faces. They come and go, and I love them well enough, butone—especially beloved above the rest is with me always.But why speak ofher?... Now that she is again so near to me—now that I go, I hope, whereshehas gone!... The guiding-light of the soul of her true womanhood is shining brighter and brighter in the gloom ahead of me still, and ofherwill my last thoughts be on this side of Eternity.And now! ... Ellis, my boy! my boy! ... One last “Good-by!” ... God bless you, and may your life be a long and happy one.I am, believe me, to the last.Your old friend,Gilbert Carlton.

Yes, Ellis, my lad!... Now that I know my end is not far off, I feel that I cannot die peaceably without telling you what has been to me a sacred secret since I was in my thirties.

It must have been in ’sixty-two, or thereabouts, when I first met your mother, in Dublin. The regiment that I and your father were in lay at Athlone, then. I grew to love her. Loved her with a passion that I fancy comes to few men, and my supreme desire was to be able to call her my wife. I suppose the Almighty willed it otherwise, though, and it was not to be.... For John Benton, your father, came along, my boy, and he was a big man, and a strong man, and a handsome man, with a bold masterful, loving way with him that took her by storm, as it were, and I—I faded into insignificance beside such a splendid personality as his. He won her from me, but that fact could not kill my love; all outward exhibition of which, though, I have guarded well. My Dear Lad I have worn the willow decently, I hope, as an honest English gentleman should, and have borne my cross patiently through the long, weary years that have passed since then.

With the recollection ofsucha woman as your mother lingering still in my remembrance,—whose dear face—God grant, I may behold again, shortly—can you wonder that none other has come into my life to take her place, and that I have been true to the memory of my first, and only love. You alone of your family havehereyes, and impulsive, loving ways, and for those reasons were always my favorite—headstrong lad, though you were.

On the subject of your estrangement from your family, I have nothing to say, beyond that I consider that it is a matter which lies entirely between your own conscience—and God. You were sorely tried, I know.

I am leaving to you the greater portion of my money. It is my desire, as through it, I hope, your future path in life will be smoothed considerably. May it ultimately bring you the happiness of enabling you to marry a good, true, loving woman, and of living henceforth, in that station of life to which you properly belong.

Do not grieve for me my lad!... Best think of me just as a kindly old soldier, at the end of his service, who was ready and willing to go to his rest—only awaiting “The Last Post” to be sounded. I have not lived altogether unhappily. I have drunk deeply of the joys of life in my time, and I possess many good and true friends. My days, thank God, have been, for the most part, passed cleanly as aman—in the open, breathing His fresh air. Through it I have had ever your dear mother’s memory to keep my conscience clear, and have striven steadfastly to adhere and live up to, most all, I trust, of the precepts that are embodied in the formula, “An officer, and a gentleman.” As in the sunset of my life I sit alone in my chair in the twilight, dreaming of bygone days, it seems to me that I can see the shining welcome of many long-lost and well-remembered faces. They come and go, and I love them well enough, butone—especially beloved above the rest is with me always.

But why speak ofher?... Now that she is again so near to me—now that I go, I hope, whereshehas gone!... The guiding-light of the soul of her true womanhood is shining brighter and brighter in the gloom ahead of me still, and ofherwill my last thoughts be on this side of Eternity.

And now! ... Ellis, my boy! my boy! ... One last “Good-by!” ... God bless you, and may your life be a long and happy one.

I am, believe me, to the last.

Your old friend,Gilbert Carlton.

Your old friend,

Gilbert Carlton.

A smothered sob burst from Ellis, and the letter fluttered from his grasp to the floor. Gallagher, still watching him curiously, repeated his former query:

“What’s up, Sargint? Hope nothin’s—”

Ellis interrupted him huskily, but not unkindly.

“Get out, Barney!” he said. “Don’t talk to me just now! I’ll tell yu’—sometime! Beat it! there’s a good chap. I just wanta be alone.”

And, with one last lingering look of silent, wondering sympathy, the rancher arose and departed slowly into the night.

Overcome with his thoughts, Ellis sat for a long time motionless; then, mechanically groping for the letter again, he reread it. Its simple pathos touched him strangely as the awe-inspiring significance of the long, patient struggle of that faithful old heart—stilled now, alas, forever—began to creep into his dazed brain. He raised his swimming eyes to the portrait of the gentle woman, the memory of whose beauty and kind, sweet personality had been the good angel alike to poor old Major Carlton and himself throughout both their strenuous and sin-tempted lives.

Not in vain had been her early teachings and loving, self-sacrificing patience and forbearance, while he was yet a wilful, headstrong youngster. As, gently, and with a mother’s tact, she strove to curb his faults and instil into him—through love, and love alone—truth, honesty, and the main principles of right and wrong.

Not in vain had she entered into her rest and, as an angel in the stead of a beautiful, pure, true-hearted woman, interceded for the souls of both men in their tempestuous journey through life.

Long and wistfully the Sergeant gazed into the grave, sweet eyes and proud, clean-cut features—so like his own—and his stern bronzed face became softened and glorified with a wave of ineffable filial devotion too sacred for words.

“Mother!” he whispered brokenly. “Mother! Oh, Mother!” and dropped his head upon his outstretched arms across the table.

But grief—no matter however sincere and true—to the average healthy man is but a transient emotion. Ellis was no dissembler, and sadly though he mourned the loss of his old friend, as the first transports of his sorrow subsided and he became calmer, a slow, dim realization of the tremendous possibilities of his good fortune began to flood his mind.

For to him it meant—freedom, at last, from all the unavoidable, petty, sordid worries connected with the calling that he followed. No more gloomy outlooks upon life in general, or pessimistic forebodings arising from the consciousness of straightened means. Free at last to wander around the earth at will and visit all its beauty spots that he had read or heard about. Free to enjoy all the pleasures of the world that money can command. He was still only a comparatively young man, strong and active far beyond the average.

And, above all, it meant—and the very thought of his presumption stirred him strangely and caused a mighty wave of long-pent-up love to surge through his heart—perhaps also it meant—Mary.

So the joy of life filled him and transfigured his scarred, somber face with a dreamy expression of happiness that lies beyond the power of mere words to adequately describe. No more was the ideal life that he had so often—ah! how often?—pictured longingly to himself in his fits of morbid, spiritless depression, only a monotonous repetition of hopeless empty dreams. It actually lay now within his power to gratify his heart’s desires to their fullest extent.

And then—to the weary man in that humble abode, which was, nevertheless, all that he could call “Home,” there appeared a wondrous fantasy which, in its awe-inspiring, majestic grandeur, might have been likened, almost, unto some allegory, or a scene in the Revelation. With mind absolutely, utterly detached from all things material, he sat there motionless, as if in a dream, and it began to float before his far-away eyes like a filmy roseate mirage.

For, in his exalted imagination, it seemed to him that he was standing upon the shores of a great sparkling crystal sea, as it were, in the first faint flush of a radiant dawn. Purple, crimson, saffron-yellow and turquoise, the morning lights stole in succession across the sleeping world, and slowly—slowly, in the mystic East—the flashing rays of a magnificent sunrise began to creep over the rim of the horizon, transforming the gleaming waste of waters into a vast expanse of golden flame.

And, as he gazed entranced at this gorgeous spectacle, suddenly he grew conscious that he was not alone. Turning, he became aware of the figure of a woman kneeling on the ground hard by, with her head bowed in an attitude suggestive of sorrowful abandon. Her form, though the face was turned from him and partly shrouded by her huge masses of dark, disordered hair, seemed vaguely familiar; and he found himself engaged in idle speculation as to her identity. Something in her posture of dejection instinctively stirred in him a fleeting memory of Thomas Moore’s beautiful poem. “Paradise and the Peri,” the poor Peri humbly, yet vainly, craving admission into Paradise. Vaguely and disconnectedly, some of the lines wandered into his mind:

One morn a Peri at the gateOf Eden stood, disconsolate;The glorious Angel who was keepingThe Gates of Light beheld her weeping;

One morn a Peri at the gate

Of Eden stood, disconsolate;

The glorious Angel who was keeping

The Gates of Light beheld her weeping;

Awhile he contemplated the woman with a great pity in his heart, and was about to draw nigh and comfort her when all at once his impulse was checked and he remained spellbound in mute amazement.

For, seemingly fromnowhere, a transcendentally glorious voice—that sounded not of this earth—suddenly arose in the stillness around them. Pure, peaceful, unutterably sweet, far beyond this world and its works, the golden notes floated forth into the hush of the opal dawn, uplifting the hearts of the listeners on the wings of sound—verily to Heaven’s gate:

“O Rest in the Lord! wait patiently for Him!And He shall give thee—He shall give thee—O He shall give thee thy heart’s desire!”

“O Rest in the Lord! wait patiently for Him!

And He shall give thee—He shall give thee—

O He shall give thee thy heart’s desire!”

The eternal solace of the weary and heavy-laden, the Divine appeal to all poor struggling souls rose and fell, finally melting away into nothingness, save where the deep, cloister-like silence flung back a faint far echo. Beside the bowed female figure there became visible a vague shimmeringsomethingwhich, almost imperceptibly, began to assume the outlines of a human form. Disturbed strangely at what he knew not, the wayward, reckless soul of Ellis Benton became filled with a great and reverential awe.

He sank to his knees and bowed his head. When, fearfully, he dared to raise it again, his eyes beheldoneclad in shining raiment, about whom there clung a halo of radiance. Slowly the glistening form turned and a cry of wonderment and adoration burst from his lips. For, lo!—it seemed to him thatonce morehe looked upon the face of his long-dead love—Eileen Regan.

Motionless, she gazed down upon him long and earnestly, with gravely sweet, kind eyes; then, stooping low, she embraced the sorrowing woman tenderly, and kissed her on the brow, bidding her be of good cheer and calling her “Sister.” Presently, drawing herself erect, she uplifted her heavenly voice again, and there rang forth—as he well remembered her singing it inlife, one never-to-be-forgotten Christmas morn, in that little Catholic Church in far-off Johannesburg—“In Excelsis Gloria”:

“Glory to God in the Highest!And on earth peace, goodwill towards men!”

“Glory to God in the Highest!

And on earth peace, goodwill towards men!”

She bent and kissed the woman a last farewell. Then, raising her arms in holy benediction, she slowly became ashade, as before, unfolding her wings and floating away diaphonously into the silvery mists of the early morn.

The kneeling woman then arose and, turning, came towards him swiftly. A tall, stately figure of a woman, with a kind, strong, sweet face; the tumbled masses of her glossy, raven-hued hair all floating and rippling about her regal shoulders and white columnar throat.

Near she drew to him—nearer. She stretched out her bare rounded arms to him with a little happy loving cry as she smiled into his eyes, and he saw the splendor and glory of the world in hers.

While, far away in his ears, rang the echo of his own voice calling upon a woman’s name—wonderingly, passionately—“Mary!... Mary!... Mary!...”

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