AT A WAY-STATION

THIRTY years ago a certain railroad in Indiana was new enough to be still a source of deep interest and curiosity to the people of the sparsely-settled region through which it passed. They had not yet ceased to gather at the stations, morning and evening, to see the “down train” and the “up train.” The projectors of this thoroughfare, having in view, perhaps, legislative appropriations and private subscriptions of stock, had artfully led the public to think that a farming country of marvelous richness was suffering for an outlet; that passengers and produce impatiently waited to crowd its cars. So impressed were guileless citizens with this idea that only a brave man or a fool would have dared to say: “Go to! We need no railroad.” Thus far in the existence of the road the great rush of travel and traffic had not begun; in the meantime, one train daily each way was found enough for all needs.

Few among the rural population along the route ever went from home; fewer still expected visitors. Yet they went regularly to see the engine and the gayly painted cars; they indulged in wild speculations as to the probable business and destination of the travelers of whom they caught glimpses. The occasional stranger who stopped at any village was confronted on the platform by groups of men in blue or butternut jeans, all chewing tobacco and expectorating profusely. He passed women in lank calico dresses and limp calico sunbonnets—some old and wrinkled, some young enough to be pretty, but, with rare exceptions, hopelessly plain. Even the dull-eyed babies, in their mothers’ arms, lacked the charm of health and wholesomeness. If the traveler chanced to wonder how one woman, with an expanse of toothless gums, could endure to smile, he might marvel that the next one appeared in public before having her unsightly teeth removed. And while he considered the sad effect of quinine, soda and tobacco on human beauty, he would have been amazed had he known the curiosity his own person excited. “Who is he?” “Where does he live at?” “What brings him down this away?” “How long will he stay?” were questions eagerly discussed.

The railroad had given them something to think about. Do you know what that means, you who have never lived in the country, remote from a business center? It means that the residents, having little outside interest, few books, perhaps no newspapers (there are such places yet), have narrowed their lives down until fresh subjects for thought and conversation are rare. They have talked about each other, about the crops, the calves, the pigs and the weather, until each man knows what another is going to say while he is yet afar off. Any unusual event, a death, an elopement, a fire, is seized upon, talked about from every point of view, turned to every light, over and over, until each thread and shred of the story is worn with age. Finally, it seems to die away, but suddenly revives, and passes on its round until set aside by something equally startling. Think, then, of the vast store of entertainment afforded by a railroad!

On this October evening, thirty years ago, the echoing scream of the locomotive, strange to say, did not draw out the usual number of idlers to gape, open-mouthed, as the train halted, then passed on. More strange still, many passengers alighted at each stopping place—the natives, themselves, returning home with the air of adventurers, breathing sighs of relief, too, as of having safely accomplished a perilous journey. Capacious lunch-baskets, as well as certain additions to their every-day attire—wide hoop-skirts on the women, shirt-collars on the men, for example—suggested that some sort of festivities had been indulged in.

As the excursionists lingered, reluctant to go while anything remained to be seen, their last glances turned from the long line of crowded passenger coaches to a baggage-car with the doors tightly closed, and a curious hush fell on them as it rolled by. What did it mean? A “through passenger,” in search of knowledge, found the path an easy one. The long, lean man at his side, with sunburned, straggling beard and a mouth like a cavern, was full of information. “Political meetin’! Lord, no! ’Lections stirs a feller up some, but there ain’t ary stump-speaker in Indiana ’at kin fetch sech an all-fired big crowd as was out to Newburg to-day. Hangin’ yo’ know—Bill Murdock’s. Hain’t heard about him? Reckon yo’ cain’t live ’round hyer, anywheres, or yo’d a knowed the peticklers. Been a powerful sight o’ talk about it, fust an’ last. Yo’ see ’t happened ’bout this hyer way: Bill, he tuck a notion one night, nigh two months ago now, ’at he’d go down to the Corners to Gimble’s an’ get some ten-penny nails.

“He was a-workin’ old Carter’s farm on the sheers an’ lived up there, full two mile from the Corners. His wife was a finicky little critter, with a mite of a baby, an’ ’peared like she had a warnin’ o’ some kind, for she done her best to coax him to stay to home. But go he would, though what he wanted with them nails jest at that time, more ’an a pin with two heads, no one could ever make out. After he’d bought ’em an’ talked with the fellers in the store a bit—mebbe had a drink or two in the back room—in come Jake Jillson. Jake was a airy sort o’ chap—could afford to be, ’cause his father ’d left him one o’ the best farms in the township, an’ he was beholden to nobody. Well, there’d been some old grutch atween him an’ Bill—no one knows zackly what. Some says Jake had courted Bill’s wife in times past, an’ that she throwed him over; but I don’t reckon that was it. Jake was married two years afore Bill was, an’ taint no ways likely ’at a female woman ’u’d give a well-to-do feller like Jake the go-by an’ take up with a pore man like Bill. They’re too long-headed, women be. ’T any rate, however ’twas, the two soon come to a quarrel. Nobody ’at heard ’em seems to agree jest how it was. Jake he was aggravatin’ an’ kep’ a naggin’. Bill allays was high-tempered, an’ fore anyone seen ’at they was really in airnest, Bill he was chasin’ of Jake over the boxes an’ bar’ls. It was on’y a minute afore he ketched him an’ hit him. The breath was knocked out o’ Jake for good an’ all with that air very pound o’ ten-penny nails.

“Jerusalem! What a racket it raised! After the folks come to their senses like, they got the sheriff an’ a posse o’ constables an’ scoured around the country right smart of a spell huntin’ Bill, afore they thought o’ going to his house. At last they went there an’ found him a-walkin’ the floor with his baby. He was teetotally wropped up in that woman an’ young un o’ his, but sick baby or not he was drug off to jail, an’ not a minute too soon. A lot o’ men in masks came a-gallopin’ down, an’ would a’ made short work o’ him if he’d been there. No, I don’t know who they were, an’ ef I did, ’twould be safe fer to keep my mouth shet. These hyer things hev to be looked after now an’ then—the law bein’ so slow an’ oncertain. Wasn’t much time lost, though, on this case. The jury wouldn’t a’ dared to a’ brought in ary other verdict than guilty, considerin’ how many rich relations Jake had scattered about this county. They’d made it mighty lively for ary juryman ’at would vote to clear his murderer. An’ so Bill, bein’, as I said, a pore man, with no friends to help him, had no show, an’ had to swing. ’Twas all right, I reckon; somebody has to be made a example of.

“Me an’ Mandy—that’s her in the red caliker a settin’ over yonder—’lowed we’d go up to Newburg to-day, where the hangin’ was at. Hadn’t ary one of us ever saw a man hung, an’ she hadn’t never been on the steam kyars. I hadn’t no notion o’ takin’ the boys, but Mandy, she says, ‘Lawsy, let ’em go, it’ll be a warnin’ to ’em to behave theirselves when they’ve growed up.’ So we all went. An’ jeminey! what a crowd! Best part o’ two counties there, I reckon.”

After a pause, during which the long, lean man ejected tobacco juice vigorously across the traveler into the aisle, he added reflectively: “A circus, I’m free to say, would a’ been more to my taste, but it wouldn’t a’ been so improvin’ to the community. Elder Borum says circuses are corrupt an’ a snare o’ the devil.”

Another pause and more tobacco.

“The—the—deceased is on a kyar back o’ this hyer.”

Just then the train quivered, slackened, stopped where a lonely country road crossed the track; not a human being, not a house in sight—only a platform and a pile of walnut lumber to hide the long, straight, western horizon beyond miles and miles of “rolling” country. In the summer, perhaps, it might have a certain beauty; in the dusk of this autumn day it was desolation. Toward the north a grove of girdled trees waved white, ghostly arms; rain had fallen and the gray earth, the heavy sky alike seemed sodden. The long gray and black curves of the wagon-track wound in and out like a huge serpent crawling over the earth.

Out upon the platform was helped from the baggage-car a young, slender woman with a baby in her arms—a woman in whose eyes was no longer hope, were no more tears.

After her was lifted a pine coffin roughly stained. The men who had touched her gently were less tender of this other burden. They dropped it with a jar that brought a little cry of pain from the woman’s lips. She sank down and placed her hand upon the box as if to shield from harm that which was within. The child upon her lap stared solemnly at the sky. The engine shrieked fiercely as if in haste to go, then rushed on, leaving her with her dead and her despair.

Curious passengers, looking back from a bend in the road, saw her crouching motionless, while a last red gleam from the setting sun broke through the clouds and touched her with a weird light.

Around a curve of serpentine highway they saw, too, a country wagon, the driver an old man with bent head, the horses slow and spiritless. Then the train swept on out of sight.

Not a pleasant story, do you say?

No, yet “’tis true, ’tis pity.” It is one of those dark threads so common in the weft of life that, to our short-sighted eyes, mar the pattern that else might be so fair. We even doubt the wisdom of the Weaver who permits such defects, such shadows to hide the clearer outlines of the web. As if we knew His designs!

Do you wish to hear the sequel—to follow to an end the twisted thread that seems to have crossed and tangled uselessly in the loom of fate?

The mother, who was left with her child at the lonely station, would have been glad to die, no doubt; but, for the sake of the babe, she must live on. She was one of those timid, clinging creatures such as all women are exhorted to become. Masculine wisdom says the manifest destiny of such a one is to be a wife and mother; the same sagacity neglects to go further and provide for her helplessness when destiny fails her. But these two lived, and the child grew and thrived. How they lived only a woman, poor and alone, who toils for her children, day and night, can tell. This mother, like the rest, worked early and late at anything her hands could find to do. She sewed, she washed, she nursed the sick, she drudged for the farmers’ wives in busy seasons. Hours when she should have slept were spent in making the scanty garments of baby Nancy. Little sympathy was manifested for her, though doubtless more was felt than found expression; the American farmer is not demonstrative. She did not ask for pity, and no one saw her weep. The neighbors said “Mrs. Murdock bore up right well under her man’s takin’ off; lucky ’at she was one o’ them kind ’at didn’t have no deep feelin’s.”

Not so with the other widow. Mrs. Jillson’s display of grief was loud and violent. Never was woman so cruelly bereaved, she said. She knew she could not live. If there were no Murdocks on the face of the earth she should die easier; she could grind them to powder herself. “What right had that sly, deceitful hussy to be alive? Not a bit of doubt she worked Bill up to the murder. Jealous, you see, because Jake looked at her once before he knew me.”

Before long, however, her excessive sorrow moderated. She allowed herself to think favorably of life once more. Hysterics and “sinking spells” grew less frequent. In less than a year she married again—entirely on her son’s account, she told her friends. “A lone widow woman couldn’t rightly bring up a boy.”

Mrs. Murdock’s feelings toward the family of her husband’s victim were curious. For them she cared nothing, but for “Billy’s sake” she cherished a strong desire, a feverish anxiety to do them some service. Had she been of the Roman Catholic instead of the Methodist faith she would have starved herself, if need be, to pay for masses for the repose of his soul. As it was, ministers of the gospel—well-meaning men—who had “labored and prayed” with Murdock before his execution, told her that he had refused the means of grace. While admitting regret for the crime committed, he had declared that he did not love God; that he knew nothing about Him. “When yo’ talk, Elder, about lovin’,” he would say, “I could sense yore meanin’ mighty well ef yo’ was a p’intin’ at my woman an’ the little chickabiddy. Them’s all I’ve got ary love fer in this hyer world. I never knowed the Lord here, an’ ef it depends upon my believin’ in an’ lovin’ of Him now, I reckon I shan’t know Him in the next place.” With which grim statement the preachers were finally forced to silence.

Being taken thus in the blackness of his sins, unconverted, of course he must pay the penalty hereafter, they told the grieving wife. The penalty, she had always been taught and had undoubtedly believed, was unspeakable torture forever and evermore.

Now, in her extremity, she did as we all do when a creed is too narrow for our own special needs—she passed it by. Turning from that monument of human wisdom, she groped for a gate where hope was not shut out.

“Billy must be punished, for he done a wicked thing, but he was not bad, he was not bad. I knowed him so well. He was always kind, on’y his temper quick—God must know that too, an’ surely, surely He can’t be hard on him always ’cause he lost control over his self jest once. Ef I could on’y do something for Mrs. Jillson, seems as if ’twould count for Billy some way. Ef she would let me work for her I might see some chance, but ’pears like she won’t let me come a-nigh.”

Having no one else, she whispered her thoughts, her wishes to the little Nancy. Instead of tender songs and baby talk, the child was lulled to sleep with stories of her father, with broken sobs and prayers. Who knows how early she became aware of a shadow upon her life? How soon she was conscious of a difference between herself and other children whom she saw? Her presence was only tolerated by the busy farmers’ wives because the mother could not leave her; no noisy play, no mischievous pranks were permitted or excused.

The children of the poor and unfortunate learn self-control and self-repression at an early age. When Nancy was ten years old she was done with childhood. She could make herself useful in many ways to the women who wanted “help.” She could “earn her own living,” and talk gravely of a half day’s or a full day’s time. Her mother, perhaps feeling that she could do no more for her daughter, and having no other interest in life, let this world slip from her feeble hold, and went out over the border into the unknown.

As she grew up, people were not often unkind to Nancy. On the contrary, they were usually friendly in a somewhat condescending way—when she did her work well. Had she been a timid, confiding creature, less self-reliant and reserved, no doubt they would have shown her many a favor that would have made her heart glad. As it was, the occasional rude taunts of other children (what is more barbarous than a cruel child?) and now and then rough allusions to her father’s death by older people, raised in her nature the armor of silence and assumed indifference. Withdrawing into herself, asking no help, she was allowed to go her way alone as best she could. So she toiled and served until she came to eighteen years of age. That time found her in the home of a farmer, twenty miles from her birthplace.

Had you asked the girl if she were happy, she might have said yes. The farmer and his wife, who had no children, were kind to her. There was plenty of hard work, to be sure, but she had known nothing else. Metaphysical questions had not troubled her; she had never asked herself if life were worth living, had accepted fate without rebellion. She had read no novels. Mr. Rhorer, the farmer, sometimes asked her to read to him from The Weekly Reaper—“types were so much littler’n they used to be, readin’ kind o’ made his head dizzy.” Nancy certainly might absorb facts, but not romance, from the able dissertations she spelled out upon the treatment of lambs, the weevil in wheat, or the advertisements of patent churns. Even the household department of the paper did not develop artistic tastes. She had no colored tissue papers wherewith to construct lamp-mats. Why should she make elaborate frames of walnut shells or crooked sticks, when she had no pictures to put in them?

An ignorant, uninteresting serving-maid, you see—very different from the æsthetic, cultured heroine, so popular nowadays. Yet this one was a woman, “with the heart and the hopes of a woman.” Hardly conscious, perhaps, that she had a heart, so long had it been starved. As in her childish days, she still held aloof from the young people, though, had she been so disposed, more than one young granger would have been glad to become her “beau,” for Nancy was fair to see. They were not so fastidious as to birth and family that her bright eyes might not have won them.

The one small interest and excitement in Nancy’s life this summer was watching the evening passenger train. It stopped for a few moments at a water station not far below the house, and there she waited, when her work was done, to catch a glimpse of the wonderful outside world, that she could see in no other way. Day after day found her there, leaning against the old gate under a wide beech tree. She liked to look at the strange faces, and took deep interest in the variety of hats and bonnets, the only articles of apparel visible from her point of view. It puzzled her to guess where so many people could always be going. If she should ever go traveling she would not look so tired and cross as many of them did; she was sure she would feel sorry, too, for girls who could only stand outside and see the cars go by. Once she saw a man carefully fasten a wrap around his wife’s throat, and heard words of tender anxiety for her comfort. She wondered vaguely if any one would ever care for her in that way; it was not likely, she thought. Somehow she did not wish to stay that night until the train started. She was tired, and the hissing of the steam made her head ache.

One day she became conscious that the young man who stood smoking a cigar on the back platform was the same one who was there yesterday, perhaps the day before that. With eyes turned away she became aware, too, that he was looking at her with bold admiration—the subtle magnetism, conveyed no scientists quite explain how, made her cheeks scarlet.

What was there in a trifle like that to make her sleep that night less dreamless than before, in spite of sound health and weary young body?

The next evening she went to the usual place. A little shyness about her now, but why should she stay away? She could not know that the young man would be there again; but he was there, and this time lifted his hat and smiled at her. If Nancy lived to be an old woman, and never saw him again, he would stay in her memory for that one act. She looked at it, not as an impertinence, but as a mark of respect. No man had ever lifted his hat to her before. The rustic beaux had not attained that touch of polish, and would have sneered had they seen him, yet have envied him his style and city manners.

The refined, accomplished lady of whom we like to read would not have been pleased with this young man. She would have seen a “person” of twenty-one or twenty-two years of age with sandy hair and a jet black moustache. A penetrating odor of hair oil and cinnamon essence diffused itself about him. Wherever jewelry is admissible in masculine outfit he had given it room—not expensive ornaments, perhaps, but large and showy. A hat worn upon one side of his head, a cigar carried in the opposite corner of his mouth, as if to balance the organ of brains, were peculiarities of his style.

The thrill which filled poor Nancy with delight would have been a shudder of disgust to our fastidious maiden.

Poor Nancy? No. Something had entered into her days which made labor light and hours short. Only smiles and glances, but these may mean so much. Once he threw a kiss at her when no one else could see; she tried not to think of that except when by herself, for fear some one might guess her thoughts.

One day her heart was set to fluttering, and her cheeks to burning when Mr. Rohrer brought the young man—yes, there could be no mistake—the same young man home to dinner with him. His name was Valentine Gipe.

“My stepfather’s name, did you say, Mrs. Rhorer? Yes, I’ve always went by name of Gipe instead of ——.” (A door slammed and Nancy did not catch that.) “Live up at Newburg, with maw an’ paw. Maw, she’s that wropped up in me she won’t hardly let me out of her sight. Am in business with Uncle Joe, down to the junction, an’ havin’ a free pass, it’s just as cheap to board at home, so I go up and down on the road every day. We’re dealin’ in stock right smart at present. Heard Mr. Rhorer had some fat cattle to sell, an’ have took a run up to see. Betcher boots I can’t be beat in jedgin’ the pints of a nanimal. Uncle Joe, he knows it, too; has dead loads o’ confidence in me.”

It took a long time to buy those cattle. Mr. Gipe came and went, and came again. When one purchase was made another was talked of, and the summer was ended before the stock was sold.

Long before that time Nancy’s heart was gone. All the love that other girls divide among friends and relatives was concentrated and lavished upon a creature who did not know what treasure was laid at his feet. He had nothing but empty words to give in return, was having a little fun, a little flirtation, he said to himself—but upon these words of love Nancy lived and was happy. The world took on a beauty she had never seen before. She wondered, as she sang at her work, that she had not noticed what a pretty blue was the sky, how bright were the sunsets; nothing in heaven, she thought, could be fairer than the moonlit summer nights.

The light of her passion brightened everything. Even the gray, heavy face of her mistress was touched with a reflected glow. Hitherto the girl had felt an unconscious pity for that worthy matron’s plainness. With feminine faith in beauty, she had wondered, idly, how Mr. Rhorer, himself no Adonis, could ever have married so unprepossessing a creature. Now she could see that the good woman might not have been so plain, after all, when young.

Mrs. Rhorer saw nothing of the play that went on before her face. Not a whisper of the old, old story reached her dull ears. She had forgotten that she was young once; she did not remember that the blood of youth is riotous, its pulses swift and eager—not sluggish, as her own. The girl was “only Nancy.” Her mistress did not see that she was fair, did not dream that she had a want that was not supplied by herself. It never occurred to her that Valentine’s frequent visits were for any one but her husband, because she knew——.

A part of what Mrs. Rhorer knew Nancy learned one day. Summer had gone then; the first bleak weather of fall had come, and sitting by the kitchen fire, the prudent farmer’s wife began planning for the winter. “I wish to goodness Dan’el an’ Val Gipe would finish up their trade about that last lot o’ cattle. We don’t want to winter them steers over. The young feller’s keen at a bargain, but powerful cautious. It’s jest as well, though, I s’pose, fer him to go slow an’ take care of his money, fer he’ll have a heap of it some day. His Uncle Joe’s an old bachelor, an’ most likely’ll leave him all he’s got, an’ then his pap left him right smart of a lump.”

“His pap dead? Why, child, didn’t I ever tell ye ’at Val’s pap was murdered when he was a baby? Gipe’s on’y his stepfather—Jillson’s rightly his name. The man was hung who did the killin’. ’Member me and Dan’el was at the hangin’.——Why! Bless my soul! What ails the critter, a whiskin’ out thataway an’ slammin’ of the door? Is she—why lawsy, come to think, the man who was hung was her pap, and I clean forgot it. Mighty touchy she is, to be sure, but I wouldn’t a’ said anything if I’d a’ thought. Was going to tell her about Val’s wedding that’s to come off next month. Wonder if we’ll get an invite.”

Nancy’s mind was in a whirl. One thought only was clear. Val was coming that night. He would have “something particular” to tell her, he had said, and she, in her innocence, had blushed and thought of but one thing he could say. Now she must tell him this awful thing; of course he did not know it, and what would he say? Quite likely he could not marry her now, for his mother would never consent. But how could they live apart?

With the simplicity of a woman who loves and knows nothing of coquetry or flirtation, she had accepted Val’s tender words without misgiving. That he had said nothing of marriage had not troubled her; so far the love had been all-absorbing, without thought for the morrow. She had not doubted that he knew her history—“everybody did”—and mixed with her affection was a strong feeling of gratitude that he had not held aloof. She would care for him just the same, she knew, if all his relatives were thieves and murderers, but this was different. Her early years had left a vivid impression on her mind of the relentless hatred of Mrs. Jillson to her mother and herself. It could hardly be hoped that time had made much change. If Val should ask his mother, perhaps—it might be—

Like one dazed she went about her tasks. Would the day never end? How gray and cold it was! The morning, she remembered, had been bright and clear. After supper she was sent to the cross-roads grocery, a mile and a half away, on some household errand. It grew dark early now, but she was not afraid. What was there to fear? She must hurry, though, to be back when Val came. It was nearer to go up the railroad than around by the turnpike, so she started home that way. It was a lonely walk even in the daylight, through dense woods and through deep cuts, but she thought only of the man she was hastening to meet.

Suddenly in the darkest part of the road, where it made a short curve, she came upon an obstruction. Partly with eyes accustomed now to the darkness, partly by touch, she found logs and stones piled high across the track.

How they came there she did not stop to consider. Like a flash came the thought, “the evening express is due; it will be wrecked and Val is on it.” One moment, then followed the thought and the deed for which she had lived her eighteen years. “If I can reach the water station I can warn the engineer; there is no other way. I shall save Val yet.” Softly she crept over the logs; with swift feet she sped up the gloomy road, and thought not of the darkness. Like an illumination around her was the feeling “My Val shall not die, I will save him.” Swifter yet she ran—it was a mile or more. Once she fell; with her ear upon the ground she heard the vibrations of the coming train. Could she not go faster? On and on, past the woods, through the cornfields now—the stalks still standing breast-high after the western fashion. How the dry leaves rustled! Her footsteps seemed to echo. Plainly now she heard the throbbing of the engine; its fiery eye shone far up the road—there was yet time, she was nearly there. Louder sounded the thunder of the train, but above that and the beating of her heart she heard again the echoing steps. Some one followed her, called to her to halt, threatened her, but still she ran faster, faster. A pistol shot, another, but she went on, staggering now. The train came thundering on, seeming in the gloom, like a destroying monster, stopped impatiently at the station, and Nancy dragged herself to the engineer’s cab. Her work was done. The creatures who, for malice or plunder, had planned the wreck were defeated, but had wreaked vengeance on her.

On board that train were lives worth more than the one for which she had given her own—men for whom other women would have died, no doubt; wives and children for whom hearts would have broken had they come to their homes no more. She had saved these passengers from destruction, but her thoughts were only for one. “Val! my Val!” was her cry—maidenly shyness gone now in the solemn presence of death. To her it was as though they two were alone in all the world. When they carried her to the house the young man followed reluctantly.

“I did it for you, Val. I know’d you’d be on the train. Seemed as if the Lord must let me get there in time. I kep’ askin’ Him over an’ over, an’ He did. I reckon it’s all up with me, though. This mornin’ I’d a been sorry, but it’s just as well. You couldn’t a married me, Val, a-knowin’ who I be, an’ it don’t ’pear as if I could a-lived away from you. You’re all I’ve got. Mother’ll be glad ’at I did this. Mebbe it’ll count for father, as she always was sayin’. Mebbe yer ma’ll forgive us all now.”

Valentine Jillson was selfish. Some woman had ministered to his comfort, his vanity, all his life. This one, he thought, had only done what was proper, everything considered. He was base, but with those dying eyes upon his face he did not remind Nancy that he had never spoken of marrying her. He could not tell the girl what he had come that night to say—that their acquaintance must come to an end, because he was to marry Squire Jones’s daughter, Juniata, next month.

And she, even with the prescience of death, could not read his treachery. With his hand clasped tightly in her own she did not know him false.

Swiftly her life ebbed away. She grew weaker, weaker. “I am—so—tired. Kiss me—once more—Val. Say you—love me. My Val. I—love—love—. It is—dark.”

With his words, his kiss (heaven would pardon this last deceit), Nancy’s eyes closed to open no more on this earth. On the other side, it may be, she took up the thread of existence that had lain in the shadow here and carried it on into the eternal brightness—the glory that is neither of sun nor of moon.