ause "it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our
sister, out of the miseries of this troublesome world." But the words
recurred to her now--mysteriously--with healing power. Had it been after
all "deliverance" for Rachel, from this "troublesome world," and the
temptations that surround those who are not strong enough for the
wrestle that Fate sets them--that a God appoints them? She had met her
lover--after fear and anguish; and had known him hers, utterly and wholly
hers, for one supreme moment. And from that height--that perfection--God
had called her. No lesser thing could ever touch her now.

Such are the moments of religious exaltation which cheat even the
sharpest griefs of men and women. Janet would decline from her Pisgah
height only too soon; but, for the time, thoughts like these gave her the
strength to bear.

When the house began to move again, she went down to Ellesborough. She
drew him into the kitchen--made a fire, and brought him food. Presently
she found calm enough to tell him many details of the previous days. And
the man's sound nature responded. Once he grasped her hand, and kissed
it--as though he thanked her dumbly again, for himself and Rachel. It
seemed to Janet indeed, as she sat by him, that Rachel had left her a
trust. She took it up instinctively--from this first desolate morning.
For there are women set apart for friendship--Janet was one of them--as
others are set apart for love.

* * * * *

And with the first break of light on the new November day, the search
parties in the hills came upon what they sought. Some one remembered the
deserted hut--and from that moment the hunt was easy. Finally in the
dripping heart of the wood the pursuers found the murderer lying face
downwards in front of the dead fire, with the revolver beside him with
which he had taken first Rachel's life, and then his own. Some sheets of
paper were scattered near him, on which he had written an incoherent and
grandiloquent confession. But of such acts there is no real explanation.
They are the product of that black seed in human nature which is born
with a man, and flowers in due time, through devious stages, into such a
deed as that which destroyed Rachel Henderson.

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