idge overlooking
the river, a gentleman from New York had built a pretty little cottage,
which, as his wife died suddenly, he never occupied, but offered for
sale, with all its furniture and appointments.

'Let's buy it,' Dolly said to her husband. 'We must go somewhere before
Arthur comes home, and we can live there very respectably and
economically, too.'

She was beginning to count the cost of everything now, and was almost
penurious in her efforts to make their income go as far as possible. So
they bought the pretty place, which she called Ridge Cottage, but Frank
did not live to occupy it. After Tom went away and left him alone with
his wife, who was not the most agreeable of companions, he failed
rapidly, both in body and mind, and those who saw him walking about the
house, with his white hair and bent form, would have said he was seventy
rather than fifty years old. Every day, when the weather permitted, he
visited Maude's grave, where he sometime stayed for hours looking down
upon the mound talking to the insensible clay beneath.

'I am coming soon, Maude, very soon, to be here beside you,' he would
say. 'Everybody has gone, even to Tom, and your mother is sometimes hard
upon me because of what I did. And I am tired, and cold, and old, and
the world is dark and dreary, and I am coming very soon.'

Then he would walk slowly back, taking the post office on his way, to
inquire for letters from the folks, as he designated the absent ones.
These letters were a great comfort to him, especially those from Jerrie,
who wrote him very often and told him all they were doing and seeing,
and tried to make him understand how much she loved and sympathised with
him. Not a hint had been given him of the baby; and when, in June, he
received a letter from her containing a photograph of the little boy
named for him, he seemed childish in his joy, and started with the
picture at once for Maude's grave. Kneeling down, with his face in the
long grass, he whispered:

'Look, Maude!--Jerrie's baby boy, named for me--Frank Tracy! Do you hear
me, Maude? Frank Tracy, for me--who wronged her so. God bless Jerrie,
and give her many years of happiness when I am dead and gone, which will
not now be long. I am coming very soon, Maude; sooner than you think,
and shall never see Jerrie's little boy, God bless him!'

That night Frank seemed brighter than usual, and talked a great deal
with his wife, who, to the last day of her life, was glad