t last. It seemed as though another deep was
rising and breaking in my heart, the flood of proud, half-stifled passion
waking in one awful moment to overwhelm me. No light upon that sea--but
hope wronged, the mockery of death for yearning love, the unguided clash
of drifting human lives!

An agony of blindness swam before my eyes. I felt my weak hands clutching
at the grass, and gasped, as though it had been indeed in the blindness
and pain of physical death, the prayer wrung from my selfish need. But
the answer was of infinite love and compassion. It came to me then--not
as some grave revelation of truth to the "enlightened seeker," but like
the kiss or peace to a tired child, a door mysteriously opened to the
self-bound captive, to one ignorant, the light shining along a plain,
straight way. And the doubt and terror and anguish went out of the world;
even the sorrowless farewell of frozen lips changed to tender
benediction.

When I looked up at last, wondering, peaceful, my face wet with happy
tears, the stars had come out in the sky, and, down below, the windows of
the Ark were shining. The faint murmur of a song was borne up to me. The
Wallencampers had gathered at the Ark to celebrate our last "meeting"
together, and I went down to join them.

* * * * *

At what ghostly hour of the next morning Grandma Keeler awoke Grandpa to
the unusual exigencies of the occasion, I cannot say. It was necessary
for me to start very early from the Ark to take the train at West Wallen,
but when I descended the stairs, by candle-light, Grandpa Keeler had been
already washed and dyed and arrayed, as for the Sabbath, in his best.
Yes, and I was constrained to believe that he had even been instructed in
the mysteries of Sunday-school lore, for there was about him an air of
haggard and feverish excitement, and he glared at my familiar presence
with wild, unseeing eyes.

Memorable were the colloquies held that morning between Grandma and
Grandpa Keeler; Grandpa's tragic assumption of manly consequence, and
solemn fears lest we should miss the train, directed in astute syllables
of warning towards Grandma Keeler; Grandma's increased deliberation, and
imperturbable quietude of soul.

I recall the strange, unearthly aspect of the scenes enacted in the Ark
at that early hour, the fleeting vision of a morning repast which formed
some accidental part in the chaos of vaster proceedings.

Then, when the firs