ain, touching him on the shoulder.

"I'm coming with you, Lucy," continued the young man. "Nothing shall
part us--as I have told you--we two,--O, my God, what can I do?"

The captain led Chester away from the dead, out to the open deck, and
buckled around him a life-belt. "Wait here" said the officer. "There is
a chance--I'm going to see. I'll be back in a minute."

Chester was alone, and in those few minutes the wonderful panorama of
life passed before him. He lived in periods, each period ending with
Lucy Strong. His boyhood, and his awakening to the world about
him--then Lucy; his schooldays, with boys and girls--out from them came
Lucy; his early manhood, his forming ideals--completed in Lucy; his
experiences in the West, and at Piney Ridge Cottage, and then came, not
Julia, but Lucy; then the gospel with its new light and assurance of
salvation; and this coupled with Lucy, her faith and love, burned as a
sweet incense in the soul of Chester Lawrence. Fear left him now. He
heard sounds as if they were songs from distant angel-choirs. Words of
comfort and strength were whispered to his heart: "Though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art
near me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me...." Eternity! Why, an
immortal soul is always in eternity; and God is always at hand in life
or in death.... Death! what is it but the passing to the other side of a
curtain, where our loved ones are waiting to meet and greet us!

Chester stepped back to Lucy. It was dark where she lay, but he passed
his hand over her form to her face, touching tenderly her cheek and
closed eyes. The flesh was not yet cold, but he felt that the soul whom
he had come to know as Lucy Strong was not there.

Captain Brown called through the darkness. Chester groped into the open
again. Was that the captain's figure on the bridge, looming black
against the faint light in the eastern sky? If it was, Chester was in no
condition to know, for just then there came a great sinking. A roar of
waters sounded in his ears, there was a struggle, a moment of agony,
and then the darkness of oblivion.

When he awoke again, he had passed over the storm-whipped bar into still
waters. There Lucy met him, and together they sailed, guided by the
unerring Light of God into the Harbor of Eternal Peace and Rest.

CHAPTER XXI.

Thomas Strong was a guest at Piney Ridge Cottage. It had taken him a
full year to get over th