The major alone did not weep. He stood with his arms folded, like a sentry relieved and waiting the next order. Even Corney’s eyes filled with tears and he murmured, “Poor Markie!” It should have been “Poor Corney!” He stooped and kissed the silent face, then drew back and gazed with the rest on the little pilgrim-cloak the small prophet had dropped as he rose to his immortality.

Saffy, who had been seated gazing into the fire, called out in a strange voice, “Markie, Markie!”

Hester turned to her at the cry and saw her apparently following something with her eyes along the wall from the bed to the window. At the curtained window she gazed for a moment, and then her eyes fell and she sat like one in a dream. A moment more and she sprang to her feet and ran to the bed, crying again, “Markie! Markie!” Hester lifted her and held her to kiss the sweet white face. It seemed to content her. She went back to her stool by the fire, and there sat staring at the curtained window with the look of one gazing into regions unknown.

That same night, before the solemn impression should pass, the major took Corney to his room and, recalling every individual expression he could of the little prophet-dreamer, carried out the commission entrusted him, not without the shedding of tears.

And Corney did not laugh. He listened with a grave, even sad face. When the major ceased, his eyes too were full of tears.

“I shall not forget Markie’s dream,” he said.

Thus came everything in to help the youth who had begun to mend his ways.

And shall we think the boy found God not equal to his dream of him? He made our dreaming. Shall it surpass in its making his mighty self? Shall man dream better than God? Shall God’s love be inferior to man’s imagination or his own?

—Forty-Eight —

A Family

When Mark’s little cloak was put in the earth, for a while the house felt cold—as if the bit of Paradise had gone out of it. Mark’s room was like a temple forsaken of its divinity. But it was not to be drifted up with the sand of forgetfulness! The major put in a petition that it might continue to be called Mark’s, but should be considered the major’s. He would like to put some of his things in it and occupy it when he came!

Every one was pleased with the idea. They no longer would feel so painfully that Mark was not there when his dear majie occupied the room!

To the major it was thenceforth chamber and chapel and monument. It should not be a tomb except as on the fourth day the sepulchre in the garden! He would fill it with live memories of the risen child! Very different was his purpose from that sickly haunting of the grave in which some loving hearts indulge! We are bound to be hopeful, nor wrong our great-hearted father.