rented the place since
Marian's parents parents lived there. Jerrie recognized it in a moment,
and so did Arthur, but he could only wring his hands before it and sob,
'Oh, Gretchen, my darling, my darling!' Changed as the house was, Jerrie
found the room she remembered so well, where she had played and her
mother had died.

'The big stove stood here,' she said, indicating the spot, 'and mother
sat there writing to you, when Nannine opened the door and let the
firelight shine upon the paper. I can see it all so distinctly, and over
there in the corner was the bed where she died.'

Then Arthur knelt down upon the spot, and as if the oft-repeated
ejaculation, 'May God forgive me!' were wholly inadequate now, he said
the Lord's Prayer, with folded hands and streaming eyes, while Jerrie
stood over him, with her arm around his neck.

'Oh, Gretchen,' he cried; 'do you know I am here after so many
years?--Arthur, your husband, who loved you through all? Come back to
me, Gretchen, and I'll be so tender and true--tender and true! My heart
is breaking, Gretchen, and only for Cherry, our dear little girl baby, I
should wish I were dead, like you. Oh, Gretchen! Gretchen! sweetest wife
a man ever called his! and yet I forgot you, darling--forgot that you
had ever lived! May heaven forgive me for I could not help it; I forgot
everything. Where are you, Cherry? It's getting so dark and cold, and
Gretchen is not here--I think you must take me home.

Jerrie took him back to the hotel, where he kept his room for three
days, and then they went to Gretchen's grave beside her mother, which
Jerrie had found after some little search and enquiry. Here Arthur stood
like a statue, holding fast to Jerrie, and gazing down upon the
neglected grave, on which clumps of withered grass were growing and
blowing in the November wind.

'Gretchen is not here in this place,' he said mournfully, with a shake
of his head. 'She couldn't rest there a moment, for she liked everything
beautiful and bright, and this is like the Potter's field. But we'll put
up a monument for her, and make the place attractive; and by and by,
when she is tired of wandering about, she may come back and rest when
she sees what we have done, and knows that we have been here. We will
buy that house too, he said, as he walked away from the lonely grave;
and the next day Harold found the owner of the place and commenced
negotiations for the house, which soon changed hands and became