of the main building went crashing down into the cellar they
were to fill, but when it came to the bed-room and wood-shed, Hannah,
Bessie, Grey and his father sat under a tree at a little distance,
watching nervously while the men took down timber after timber, until
the spot was clear, and the ground as smooth as it usually is under a
floor where there is no cellar.

"Oh," Bessie said, with a sigh of relief, as she turned to Grey, who was
sitting next to her, but her eye went past him to Hannah, who, with her
hands clasped tightly together, sat as rigid as a block of marble,
gazing so intently at the spot which held so much horror for her that
she did not at first know when Bessie stole softly to her side; but when
the young girl wound her arm around her neck, and kissing her softly,
said: "They have let him into the light, and I am so glad; it does not
seem now like a hidden grave," the tension on her nerves gave way, and
she burst into a paroxysm of tears, the very last she ever shed over
that hidden grave. For, like Bessie, she felt better, now that the
sunlight was falling upon it, and by and by, when everything was
accomplished, and Bessie had carried out her idea, she felt that the
dead man's monument would be worthy of a far nobler personage than he
who slept beneath it.

Yielding to Bessie's earnest solicitations Grey decided to remain with
her in Allington during the summer and superintend in person the work,
which, owing to good management and the great number of men employed,
went on so rapidly that by the last of October everything was done
except the furnishing, which was to be put off until Spring, for before
the autumn came it was known that Hannah would never occupy the house
save as she went there a visitor. The words spoken to her many years
before by the Rev. Charles Sanford had been repeated, and this time her
answer had been:

"Yes, Charlie, if you do not think it too ridiculous for people as old
as we are to marry. Why, I am almost sixty."

"But just as dear and young to me as if you were sixteen," was the reply
of the Rev. Charles, who was quite as much in love as he had been nearly
forty years before, when he asked Hannah Jerrold to be his wife.

Of course after it was settled he went straight to Martha's grave and
staid there all the afternoon, and did a little gardening around it, and
trained the rose-bush around the head-stone, and picking a half open
blossom, put it in his button-hole