him--and you've kept me from him--for I didn't know--"

"Moira," he called to her in his pain, "don't think these things--don't
feel these things--"

But she only looked at him kindly and as if she were a long way off.

"I love him," she said, "better than life."

He stared at her then, and I saw what was in his mind. He thought she
was crazy--stark, staring crazy. Next he said, "Good night, Moira--my
darling, Moira." And he stumbled out into the fog like a man that's been
struck blind.

But I knew she wasn't crazy. Maybe 't was living with Mis' MacFarland
made me believe things like that. Maybe 't was Moira herself. But I
didn't feel she was any more crazy than I do when I've heard folks
recite, "I know that my Redeemer liveth."

But this isn't the end--this isn't the strangest part! Listen to what
happened next.

There was a storm after the fog and strange vessels came into the
port--and Moira came to Mis' MacFarland and her eyes were starry and
says she:

"I'm going to get 'em to put me aboard that vessel," and she points to a
bark which is a rare thing to see nowadays in these waters.

"He's out there," says she.

I didn't doubt her--I didn't doubt her any more than if she'd said the
sun was shining when my own eyes were blinded by the light of it.

"Go, then," says Mis' MacFarland.

I tell you Moira was dragged out of that house as by a magnet. The sky
had cleared and lay far off and cold, and the wrack of the broken clouds
was burning itself up in the west when I saw a dory cast off from the
vessel.

It was a queer procession came up our path, some foreign-looking
sailors, and they carried a man on a sort of stretcher, and Moira walked
alongside of him. I saw three things about him the same way you see a
whole country in a flash of lightning.

One was that he was the strangest, the most beautiful man I had ever
looked on, and I saw that he was dying.

Then in the next breath I knew he belonged to Moira more than anyone on
earth ever had or would. Then all of a sudden it was as if a hand caught
hold of my heart and squeezed the blood from it like water out of a
sponge, for all at the same time I saw that they hadn't been born at the
right time for each other and that they had only a moment to look into
each other's faces--before the darkness of death could swallow him.

I couldn't bear it. I wanted to cry out to God that this miracle had
come to pass only to be wiped out like a mark in the sand