than ever, all her dearest illusions dashed into
hopeless fragments, and a promise which she did not value to one whom
she did not love quite perfect and intact.

The venerable grandmother sat propped with pillows in her arm-chair, and
now and again adjured the girl to "show some manners an' tell the
neighbors what they so honed to know." With the vehemence of her
insistence her small wizened face would suddenly contract; the tortures
of the rheumatism, particularly rife in such weather, would seize upon
her, and she would cry aloud with anguish, and clutch her stick and
smite her granddaughter to expedite the search for the primitive
remedies of dried "yarbs" on which her comfort depended.

"Oh, Lord!" she would wail as she fell back among the pillows. "I'm
a-losin' all my religion amongst these hyar rheumatics. I wish I war a
man jes' ter say 'damn 'em' once! An' come good weather I'll sca'cely be
able ter look Loralindy in the face, considerin' how I hector her whilst
I be in the grip o' this misery."

"Jes' pound away, Granny, ef it makes ye feel ennywise better," cried
Loralinda, furtively rubbing the weales on her arm. "It don't hurt me
wuth talkin' 'bout. Ye jes' pound away, an' welcome!"

Perhaps it was her slender, elastic strength and erect grace, with her
shining hair and ethereal calm pallor in the midst of the storm that
evoked the comparison, for Ozias Crann was suddenly reminded of the
happy similitude suggested by the letter that he had heard read and had
repeated yesterday to his cronies as he stood in the road. The place was
before him for one illumined moment--the niche in the cliff, with its
ferns and vines, the delicate stately dignity of the lilies outlined
against the intense blue of the sky.

The reminiscence struck him like a discovery. Where else could the
flower have been so naturally noticed by this man, a stranger, and
remembered as a mark in the expectation of finding it once more when the
bulb should flower again--as beside the county road? He would have been
hopelessly lost a furlong from the path.

Crann stood for a moment irresolute, then silently grasped his pickaxe
and slunk out among the mists on the porch.

He berated his slow mind as he hurried invisible through the vast clouds
in which the world seemed lost. Why should the laggard inspiration come
so late if it had come at all? Why should he, with the clue lying half
developed in his own mental impressions, have lost all th