hn and his wife have
departed to their rest and their strange story, the strangest almost of
all stories, is practically forgotten. Stephen, whose father has also
departed, is a prosperous baronet and rather heavy member of Parliament
and magistrate, the father of many fine children, for the Miss Hope
of old days has proved as fruitful as a daughter of the Goddess of
Fertility, for that was the "Mother's" real office, ought to be.

"Sometimes," she said to me one day with a laugh, as she surveyed a
large (and noisy) selection of her numerous offspring, "sometimes, O
Allan"--she still retains that trick of speech--"I wish that I were back
in the peace of the Home of the Flower. Ah!" she added with something of
a thrill in her voice, "never can I forget the blue of the sacred lake
or the sight of those skies at dawn. Do you think that I shall see them
again when I die, O Allan?"

At the time I thought it rather ungrateful of her to speak thus, but
after all human nature is a queer thing and we are all of us attached to
the scenes of our childhood and long at times again to breathe our natal
air.

I went to see Sir Stephen the other day, and in his splendid greenhouses
the head gardener, Woodden, an old man now, showed me three noble,
long-leaved plants which sprang from the seed of the Holy Flower that I
had saved in my pocket.

But they have not yet bloomed.

Somehow I wonder what will happen when they do. It seems to me as though
when once more the glory of that golden bloom is seen of the eyes of
men, the ghosts of the terrible god of the Forest, of the hellish and
mysterious Motombo, and perhaps of the Mother of the Flower herself,
will be there to do it reverence. If so, what gifts will they bring to
those who stole and reared the sacred seed?

P.S.--I shall know ere long, for just as I laid down my pen a triumphant
epistle from Stephen was handed to me in which he writes excitedly that
at length two of the three plants are _showing for flower_.

Allan Quatermain.

End of Project Gutenberg's Allan and the Holy Flower, by H. Rider Haggard

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