!' and had slowly returned
back to her home to find that Sylvia had left it, why she did not at
once discover. But, growing uneasy as the advancing hours neither
brought Sylvia nor little Bella to their home, she had set out for
Jeremiah Foster's as soon as she had seen her mother comfortably
asleep in her bed; and then she had learnt the whole story, bit by
bit, as each person who spoke broke in upon the previous narration
with some new particular. But from no one did she clearly learn
whether Sylvia was with her husband, or not; and so she came
speeding along the road, breathless, to where Kester sate in
wakeful, mournful silence, his sister's sleeping head lying on his
shoulder, the cottage door open, both for air and that there might
be help within call if needed; and the dim slanting oblong of the
interior light lying across the road.

Hester came panting up, too agitated and breathless to ask how much
was truth of the fatal, hopeless tale which she had heard. Kester
looked at her without a word. Through this solemn momentary silence
the lapping of the ceaseless waves was heard, as they came up close
on the shelving shore.

'He? Philip?' said she. Kester shook his head sadly.

'And his wife--Sylvia?' said Hester.

'In there with him, alone,' whispered Kester.

Hester turned away, and wrung her hands together.

'Oh, Lord God Almighty!' said she, 'was I not even worthy to bring
them together at last?' And she went away slowly and heavily back to
the side of her sleeping mother. But 'Thy will be done' was on her
quivering lips before she lay down to her rest.

The soft gray dawn lightens the darkness of a midsummer night soon
after two o'clock. Philip watched it come, knowing that it was his
last sight of day,--as we reckon days on earth.

He had been often near death as a soldier; once or twice, as when he
rushed into fire to save Kinraid, his chances of life had been as
one to a hundred; but yet he had had a chance. But now there was the
new feeling--the last new feeling which we shall any of us
experience in this world--that death was not only close at hand,
but inevitable.

He felt its numbness stealing up him--stealing up him. But the head
was clear, the brain more than commonly active in producing vivid
impressions.

It seemed but yesterday since he was a little boy at his mother's
knee, wishing with all the earnestness of his childish heart to be
like Abraham, who was called the friend of God, or