ur turn--are to be nothing, mere items of the past lost in
Oblivion, why not spare them the hideous revelation of the many, many
years of might-have-been, when the same sun shone unmoved on each, even
marked the hours for them alike, each unseen by the other, each beyond
the sound of the other's speech, the touch of the other's hand? Why
should either now, at the eleventh hour, come to know of the audacious
fraud that made them strangers?

But why--why anything, for that matter? Why the smallest pain, the
greatest joy? What end does either serve, but to pass and be forgotten.
What is left for us but the bald consolation of imaging a form for the
Supreme Power--one like ourselves by preference--and a concession to
it.... _Fiat voluntas tua!_ It doesn't really matter _what_ form, you
see! The phantasmata vary, but the invisible what?--or who?--remains the
same. Gloria in excelsis Deo, nomine quocunque!

CHAPTER V

HOW MRS. PICTURE SPOILED OLD PHOEBE'S DREAM, BUT WAS A NICE OLD
SOUL, TO LOOK AT. PARSON DUNAGE's MOTHER. A CLOCK THAT STRUCK,
BETWEEN TWO TWINS. HOW TOBY DID NOT WAKE, AND KEZIAH SOLMES CAME
NEXT DAY FOR HIM. THE WICKED MAN WHO DID IT AGAIN, AND HIS
RESEMBLANCE TO TOBY. THE COATINGS OF THE LATTER'S STOMACH. MRS.
LAMPREY. COLONEL WARRENDER AND THE PHEASANTS. HOW WIDOW THRALE AND
KEZIAH WENT TO SEE AN OLD SOUL NEXT DAY. A RETROSPECULATION.
SUPPOSE WIDOW THRALE HAD BEEN TOLD! ON IMPROBABILITY,
IMPOSSIBILITY, INCREDIBILITY, AND MAISIE's PILGRIMAGE TO A GRAVE
SHE NEVER FOUND. MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, JOHN, AND THEIR IRRELEVANCE

"'Tis pity she could not stop!" said Granny Marrable in the course of
evening chat with the niece, who was scarcely thought of as anything but
a daughter, by even the oldest village gossips. Indeed, when we reflect
that little Ruth Daverill, now Widow Thrale, was under four when her
mother tore herself from her to rejoin her husband, it is little wonder
that she should take the same view of her own parentage. For one thing,
there was the twinship between the mother and aunt. The child under four
can have seen little difference between them.

The pen almost shrinks from writing Widow Ruth's reply to old Phoebe, so
plainly did it word her ignorance of who this was that she had seen two
hours since. "Who, mother? Oh, the old person! Ay, but she has a kind
heart, has Gwen." This was not disrespectful familiarity. All the
villagers in tho