spired with the thought, fell to folding less
amberous raiment, until, my duty done, I pressed the cover down, and
locked my treasures in, for the journey of the morrow. Then I took out
my sacred gift to guard, and, laying it before me, looked at it. It was
of dimensions scarcely larger than the moon,--that is, extremely variant
and uncertain: to one, a planet, larger than Jupiter, moons and all; to
another, scarcely more than a bridal ring. So my packet was of uncertain
size: _undoubtedly_ the tower was packed away in it, Herbert too,--and I
couldn't help agreeing with my thought, and confessing that this was a
better form for conveyance than that I so lately had planned; so I put
it safely away, with myself, until the day should come. The day-star had
arisen in my heart. Would it ever go down? Not whilst He who holdeth the
earth in the hollow of His hand hath me there too. Reaching out, once
more, for the strong protective fibres that had so blessed me, I
wandered forth with it into the land whose mural heights are onychites
and mocha-stones of mossy mystery.

How long I might have lingered there I know not,--so delicious was the
fragrance and so fair the flowers,--had not Chloe's voice broken the
mocha-stones, scattering the mosses like autumn-leaves.

"Honey, I thought I'd waken ye,--the day is just cracking," said Chloe,
at the door, and she asked me to open it one moment.

When I had done so, there she stood, just as I had seen her when I bade
her good-night,--save that her basket was void of contents.

"Master Abraham didn't know you was going home," Chloe said, "or he'd
have told you good-bye; and I guesses he sent what he didn't tell, for
he asked me to give you this."

When Chloe was gone, I opened the small package. It was a pretty casket,
made of the margarite of the sea. Within it lay a faded, fallen,
fragmentary thing. At first, I knew not what it could be. It was the
althea-bud that grew in the summer-time of eighteen years ago, that
had been Mary's,--and my heart beat fast as I looked upon the silent
voicefulness that spake up to me, and said, "To you, who have restored
him to himself, he offers the same tribute;" and I lifted up the
iridescent, flashing cradle of margarite, and reverently touched
the ashes of althea it held with my lips. Afterwards they were
salt,--whether with the saltness of the sea the bud had been baptized
in, or of the tears that I let fall, I knew not.

I folded up my good-b