e the fire, dreaming and waiting, for yesterday
brought me an experience very different from my usual monotonous life.

Was it all some phantom? It must be.

The Miriam that I have longed for all these years was not here
yesterday, did not sit in this very chair. It must have been a vision,
the mere fancy of an old man's mind. For how many times in sleep has not
the same dream come to me as a whispered message from another world,
from her grave even--and on awakening I always seemed to know that her
journey through life was at an end.

But no, it was not a phantom, for here is the necklace. Then it
was not a dream. Fate has really sent her to me so we can cheer each
other in these, the last hours of our earthly lives.

But will she come back today as she promised? Or will she depart
again, this time for good, so that I shall see her no more until I have
crossed the River of Death.

O Miriam, come to me, I need you more now than ever before. Come,
I am waiting with outstretched arms.

Yes, she is coming. I see the yet distant form of the one I love.
She is approaching, coming ever nearer. Miriam, what happiness we shall
yet have together, in the dusk of our lives, what pleasant hours here by
the fire--

* * * * *

Death, kindly death, come now to me. She passed by my shop and
turned the corner and went toward the station. Her heart then is still
cold as stone.

It was the money I paid her for the necklace that bought her
ticket to another town----

SOMETHING PROVINCIAL

THE little house in Pemborough Square had been vacant for many years.

NO lights through the closed shutters--

NO smoke from the chimneys--

EVENING--

AN old woman was sitting on the doorstep muttering to herself in some
strange tongue--

HER vague eyes saw neither the square nor its straight rows of trees--

ONLY something far away--a memory perhaps

SOME tragedy lay hidden in her heart.

MANY years ago this small house had been occupied by a family with
several children--children that played games in the great garden behind.

A YOUNG woman had been much with the little troop of children.

THEY had all loved her who played with them as if a child herself and in
happy hours had sung French songs to them.

SHE had gone away, they had heard to the Island of Madeira.
--and the children soon forgot their sweet friend.

ON the steps of this now abandoned house sat the mutter