passed out of hearing.
"They were all over at that dinner at Hemlock Ridge that Pink took me to
last winter. I remember Mr. Locksley especially because he was so big
and strong-looking, like a young giant, almost. I asked Pink who he was,
because I noticed how good he was to his family, carrying the baby
around on one arm and helping his wife unpack baskets with the other.
Yesterday morning when he left the house he was just as well and strong
as anybody in the world, Captain Doane told me. He went off laughing and
joking, and stopped to call back something to his wife about the garden,
and two hours later they carried him home--like that! In just an instant
the life had been crushed out of him."

Her voice broke and she swallowed hard before she could go on.

"I've always thought death wouldn't be so bad if one could die as dear
Beth did, in 'Little Women.' Don't you remember how sweetly and gently
she faded away, and so slowly that there was no great shock when the end
came? She had time to get used to the idea of going, and to say things
that would comfort them after she was gone. But to be snatched away like
Mr. Locksley--without a moment's warning--it seems too dreadful! I don't
see how God can let such cruel things happen."

"But think, little daughter," urged Mrs. Ware gently, "how much he was
spared. No long illness, no racking pain, no lingering with the
consciousness that he was a burden to others! There is nothing cruel in
that. It's a happy way for the one who goes, dear, to go suddenly. It
is the way of all others I would choose for myself."

"But think of the ones left behind!" said Mary, with a shudder. "I don't
see how that poor woman can go on living after having the one she loved
best in all the world, torn so suddenly and so utterly out of her life."

"But he isn't, dear!" persisted Mrs. Ware gently. "You do not think
because Joyce has gone away to another land, which we have never seen,
and an ocean rolls between us, that she is torn out of our lives, do
you? She does not know what we are doing, and we cannot follow her
through her busy, happy days over there, but we know that she is still
ours, that her love flows out to us just the same, that separation
cannot make her any less our own, and that she looks forward with us to
the happy time when we shall once more be together. That's all that
death is, Mary. Just a going away into another country, as Joyce has
gone. Only the separation is harder