friend, and to strike from
off the earth Abraham's arch of light. It was wonderful: a chance, a
change, had killed Mary.

"Doctor Percival had that very afternoon, while we were gone, wrought
changes in the little white office; hence the fatal mistake. Bernard had
gone in, taken up a bottle from the very place where the article wanted
had stood for two years, poured its contents into the cup, carried it
in, and no hand stayed him. He was too blinded by suffering to see for
himself. Doctor Percival's hand gave the draught, and Mary was dead.
What should be done?

"'What shall I do? What would you have me to do?' asked Bernard.

"We were come to the church on our way. I stayed my steps, and thought
of the letter that Abraham had given me; it came up for the first time
since I knew of Mary's death. But I did not allude to it. I could not
acknowledge, even to him, that I knew another had received the words
that should have been spoken only to me; and sincerely I told him that
he must go away, at once and for always,--that the deed his hand had
unknowingly done must be borne in swift, solemn current through his
life,--that he must live beside it until it reached the ocean to come:
it could do no good to reveal it; it could arouse only new misery; it
seemed better that it should be written on marble and in memory that
'God took her.'

"He took up the silence that came after my words, and filled it with an
echoing question:--

"'If I go out, and bear this deed, as you say bear it, in silence and in
suffering, will you,--you, to whom God has given a good inheritance, who
know not the rush and roar of any evil in your soul, whose spring rises
far back in ancestral natures,--will you stand between me and all this
that I must bear? Will you be my rock, set here, in this village? May I
come back at times, and tell you how I endure? If you will promise me
this, I will go.'

"Why should he come to me? why not to the other one, to whom he told of
Alice's death two years ago? He did not know that pride was the ever
vernal sin of _my_ race, that I had it to battle with. But I conquered,
and promised I would help him, since it was all I had to do. A few more
words were spoken; he was to write to me when he would come; and we
parted, there, at the old church-door,--he promising to live, to try and
make atonement for his sin,--I to hold his deed in keeping, alone of all
the world, save Chloe, and in her I had trust. I did not see h