When Lassie came back from that last walk to the Falls she went straight up to Alva's room, and found her lying on the bed, the faint light from the shaded window throwing a deep shadow upon her face and form. Her head and shoulders were a little propped up against the pillows, and her hands were clasped on her bosom instead of behind her head, as was her favorite position.

Lassie's eyes were shining and her heart was very full and happy with the bubbling joy of that bubbling joyous emotion which Youth in its ingenuous innocence, ignorance, and arrogance has elected to call "love." It had come very vividly to both herself and Ingram during their walk, and instead of discussing Alva's affairs, they had suddenly become more than ever keenly alive to their own. Ingram, conscious of good looks, good health, and a good income, had for some time faced the position very cheerfully and gratefully; but Lassie, conscious of no personal advantages at all equalling those pertaining to her demigod, was, of course, thrilled through and through. Certainly these be topsy-turvy days for chivalric standards, but perhaps a century later, people will quote with reverence from the stories of grandmother's experiences before grandpapa was finally secured.

Lassie was very happy. She felt sure that nothing so ideally beautiful and altogether remarkable as Ingram's speeches during the walk had ever been heard before. She was not engaged, but she was "as good as engaged." And before her début, too. Fancy the faces of the girls when she really announced it! She would be the first one of the whole set to be married! Life was nothing but vistas of joy. Ingram was absolutely going to take the same train that she did at six o'clock, and go two hours of the way with her. Oh!

And now she was back in Alva's room, standing at the bedside, looking down at her friend. Something in the other's lax position made her look more closely even in the semi-darkness.

"Your head is worse?" she asked, startled.

"No, dear," said Alva, and her voice rang strangely – like a low toned bell, chiming afar.

"Something has happened?"

"Yes, dear."

"Oh – " the young girl could not put the question.

Alva did not speak. Lassie felt her heart freezing harder every instant. It was always so, when one came within the circle of that greater existence. Part of the attraction of Ingram was that he was just so ordinarily human. Alva was never ordinary, and scarcely ever human. Oh, dear! Her lovely dream seemed suddenly slipping out to sea before this tremendous, quiet storm of resistless stress!

"You have had a letter?" she whispered timidly, at last.

"Yes, dear, and he is dead." Alva spoke quite steadily.

"Dead!"

"I had a letter from his friend – his doctor – the one who wrote for him. You were right in what you thought. He died last night, in the night, while I slept. He was unconscious when he died. He struggled first and suffered – while I was struggling and suffering, you remember – and then he grew still when I grew still, and then when I slept he slept and began to die, and while I still slept he died – that is – his body died."

Lassie sank down upon the bed beside her, took the clasped hands into her own, and burst into bitter tears, hiding her face in the four hands at once.

After a little Alva spoke again, still in the same low, ringing voice.

"It came so close that I did believe that it would be, but there are some dreams that may not be realized on earth. Mine was such a one."

Lassie lifted her head to look into her face; she was sufficiently accustomed to the dim light by this time to be able to see distinctly the pure and noble outlines, the large, tragic eyes. She felt herself crushed into speechlessness.

"He wrote me himself," Alva continued presently; "just the merest word. I read it. I read it twice. Then I sat still for a long, long time. Lassie," she pressed the girl's hands warmly, "it was good to think that I had shown my happiness to you, for no one will ever know that I was ever happy, now. Oh, it was so long that I sat here, thinking. I told you once, how, in the first day of my supreme joy, I went into the cathedral near the hospital and thanked God on my knees for all the past and made a vow to accept with courage all that might come to me, in return for that joy. I thought, as I prayed, that I'd go forth and gladly starve and freeze till I died, if it were the purchase price of such happiness. I am remembering that hour. I will not cry out, nor weep, nor say one word. I have had him; we shall be one again. My desire has always been only to be worthy him – to be worthy him – to be worthy him! And now I have the chance to prove myself so; and I will not fail, – though the heart in my body burst, my spirit will not fail."

Lassie was still, overawed.

"I had to search to be thankful at first," Alva went on, "but now I have found something to be very thankful for. I am so glad that it came before I had told my mother. She is spared. She will never know. Every one is spared except him and me, and we are strong – we can endure. We have endured. We can endure again."

"If you only could have gone and been with him!" wailed the girl, softly.

"Oh, how I have wished that! You don't know how I have wished that! It has been sweeping through me and rending me cruelly, but he did not wish it, or he would have sent for me. And I have tried never even to wish anything unless he wished it, too. You know how I have wished that I might have stayed there with him. But he begged me to go. They would not let me stay. I had to yield!"

"Shall you go as you planned, to-night?"

"No, dear, I want to stay here alone for three or four days, and then go home, – back to my duty to my parents, you know. I never meant to leave for long. Yes," she almost whispered, "I must hurry back home, forever."

"Never to return here?"

"I think, never. I cannot see how or why I should return."

Lassie's lips quivered. "And your house?" she whispered.

A long, sad breath passed over lips that did not quiver. "Ah, yes, my house," she answered softly; "I thought of going to it this afternoon, and then I could not. Dear little home nest, – there are nothing but happy thoughts there; all my best is there – unselfish dreams, devoted hopes, great aims, longings to make some one and every one glad."

She paused. Lassie leaned close.

"May I lie down beside you, Alva, and put my arms around you and hold you tightly, dear? It will be good-by, for you want me to go just the same, I know."

"Yes, dear, you must go. What time is it?"

"It's over an hour till the train. Let me hold you close, dear, I – I love you."

"Yes, Lassie, come; I'll be glad to have you. Your head will lie on my arm, and I shall like to draw you near as I might have drawn a little child, had life fallen out differently long ago."

Lassie crept up on the bed, clasped her arms about her and tried not to weep.

"You don't mind my talking of him, do you?" the woman asked, presently. "You know after you go I shall never have any one again;" her voice wailed desolate with the last words so that its very sound caused Lassie's sobs to renew their force.

"I don't mind anything that you want to do, Alva."

"It's storming in upon me what life was to have been. What does the world know of love? Love is something too great to comprehend. It costs blood and years and tears. It goes so deep that the very joy in it cuts like a knife. I knew that I was only to have had him a few weeks, that I should have to compress all that I felt for him into them. But what those few weeks would have meant! When to be quiet together was in itself all that we asked! When we should have had a library and a piano, and the gorge to look out over, and one another to talk to, – to be with!" She stopped – her breath failed her.

There was a pause, as if to let the tide of grief sweep up and out again.

"Oh, Lassie, we had waited so long and hopelessly," she went on finally, her sentences short and tense and broken. "I tried to be so patient. I tried so hard to do well with the bit of life dealt out to me. As much as I could, I followed in his path in the giving of my all to others and neither asking nor expecting for myself. I hoped nothing for us – nothing for us! And then I had to see him stretched out – crushed – maimed, and I had to live still, and smile into his eyes, and tell him that even that was more than I had deserved. And then came our dream – our precious dream – the promise of those few, sweet, perfect days! Oh, but why should I repine? I have been so happy. I have contemplated the heights, even if it was not given me to reach them."

There was another pause.

"Lassie, it is not my soul that is wailing; my soul is very strong and resolute. He left work undone and even this afternoon it came to me that that work was part of him and that in doing it I should do for him. If we could suffer annihilation in a good cause, we should survive in the cause. If I carry forward all that he held in heart, I shall continue to be one with him. I know it. I longed unutterably to be with him, to make his pain lighter, to share his hours at the last. I thought a great deal of our happiness, but I thought also of what he would teach me to do for the world. Oh, I can believe that he suffered last night. It was only the edge of the storm that brushed over me, but I know how I suffered. There are some men who cannot die, who are too sorely needed; and he was such a one. He did not want to leave his work."

She stopped, and Lassie felt the tide of grief rise full and ebb again.

"It wasn't love or marriage as the world understands it; but it was the supreme self sacrifice that my spirit cried for in consecration. I thought that I was to be greatly fitted for a great work."

Lassie whispered: "Perhaps you have been fitted."

"No. No! Heaven ordained that the sacrifice and the consecration should be greater than I had ever imagined. It ordained that he should pass away alone and leave me alone, too; and now it is left me to work out a new salvation. I try not to doubt, I do trust God completely. But I cannot see why – or how! Not yet. But, at any rate, the worst for me is come. I have touched bottom. Battle for me is past."

Then she rose from the bed, went to the window and let up the shade. The night of Nature's world, always full of potency, calmed her suddenly into another mood.

"It is snowing," she exclaimed; "that means that rain is falling on new-made graves." She came back from the window. "Lassie," she said, "my heart is broken, my future is crushed, and yet I feel so strong! It floods me fresh. I see now that wherever his soul passed last night, it must have passed in triumph – gone on to further work. I shall work, too. That is the legacy his letter left me – an intense desire to serve. How small I am, how great God is; all life's misery results from setting our little wills in opposition to His plan for our best. It is borne in upon me clearly; I recognize the fact well. Now when I leave this room next time and forever henceforth, so long as I live, I am willing with my whole soul to do whatever work there is laid out for me. I feel in my heart that no stumbling or even ridicule for stumbling can ever again cause me to falter. I have found Truth. I will be strong."

Lassie looked at her in wonder. The white look of unearthly radiance which men once knew as "Ecstasy" was indeed on her face now – on her pale, sad, worn face, filling it with a glow of wondrous resolution.

"Oh, Alva!" the girl exclaimed, and then, even as the exclamation left her lips, she was conscious of an upleaping of warm, human joy to think of the six o'clock train and Ingram's companionship. The higher plane was very high above her yet.

Alva pressed her hands to her eyes and face. "That was like a lightning flash, dear," she said; "oh, if I may only live by its light forever after. If only!" There was a brief silence; then, —

"I must pick up my things, I guess," the girl suggested.

"Yes, dear," Alva tried to smile; "yes, you must pick up your things. That's what life here means."

Lassie slipped into her own room. She was glad that Alva was quiet and that she could smile upon her again; it was truly what life meant to her. She was very little yet and very blind, and the angels might have been smiling meaningly and mercifully at one another over her pretty, childish head that hour.

But over Alva the Spirits of Heaven might have wept, – as they weep for any on earth who fancy that they have sounded either the depths or the heights of any design wrought out above.

Above is so far above, and we and all our hopes and joys and sorrows are so far beneath. So far beneath that radiant serenity which moves eternally forward in its fulfilling of the Divine Plan. His Divine Plan for the uplifting of all that He has made.

CHAPTER XXIV
DAWN

As the train pulled out, a half hour later, Alva, now quite steady and serene, waved her hand, and then turned away so as not to see Lassie, weeping, yet clinging close to the strong arm thrown before her like a guard.

"You'll come home with me, my dear," said Mrs. O'Neil, who had come to the station, too; "you look a little tired and pale, and I'll help you finish your own packing, and then you must have some good hot tea and gingerbread."

Alva laid her hand in the kindly, warm hand of the other. "Yes, let us go home," she said; "but I'm not going to-night, so my packing can wait."

"You aren't going! Oh, I am glad. Then you'll have a little time for rest. You need it." Mrs. O'Neil was so frankly pleased that Alva was forced to thank her kindliness in spirit. The racked are so grateful to a tender touch after their sharpest agony.

They went across the tracks and up the little cinder-path. Mary Loretta and the cat came running out to meet them, and Mary Cody had the teakettle boiling.

"She's not going to-night," said Mrs. O'Neil, getting out the tea and handing it to Mary Cody, who was now cutting gingerbread. "I'm so glad; it would be so lonesome without her."

Mary Cody assented.

"And those two young people are happy, too," Mrs. O'Neil said to Alva, in the dining-room a minute later, "such a nice-looking couple!"

"I hope she'll be happy," said Alva, staring out of the window as she sat by the table waiting idly. "She will have everything to make for her happiness now." Lassie and Ingram had ceased to matter to her. Her brain could not include them in this hour.

Mrs. O'Neil's eyes filled as she glanced that way. The still, quiet face and form by the window had some tragedy written in every line, although the lips stayed closed and the bright-faced hostess felt what she could not know.

"There, my dear, there's the tea; let me pour your cup," she said. "Do put in some cream just for once, it's so nourishing; and why, I declare, if here isn't Mrs. Ray, just in time to have a cup with us!"

Mrs. Ray had passed the window and now opened the door and came in. There was an air of strongly repressed excitement about her.

"So she's gone," she said briskly. "I was peeking out watching the mail-bag to see that no one else stuck a letter in the strap on me, and I saw you all seeing her off. Pretty she is, – and it's plain to be seen what's going to happen next, and I'm very glad for them both."

"Yes," said Mrs. O'Neil, smiling; "we're all that."

"I come down for several reasons," said Mrs. Ray. "First," she turned to Alva, "there's a letter that come this morning, and heaven knows how it happened – with all my care – but it slipped under those pesky government scales and I found it when I dusted out this afternoon. I hope it isn't very important."

Alva took the letter with its typewritten address and put it in her pocket. "Don't worry, Mrs. Ray," she said, "Lassie's gone; I'm going very soon; nothing can matter much now, can it?" She managed to smile.

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Ray. "That's your view because you're going, but I can't say that I shall feel really settled in my mind till the dam's settled."

"But I thought the quicksand was going to settle the dam," said Mrs. O'Neil; "somebody said so."

"You can't settle even a quicksand with a legislature," said Mrs. Ray; "I guess I know. The United States Government is a great eye-opener, especially when you have to tend a post-office according to any new rules it finds time to have printed and mail you. I've had four pages of new rules sent me to-day."

"Here's your tea, Mrs. Ray," said Mrs. O'Neil; "do sit down. Bring some more gingerbread, Mary. And won't you have a little jam? I've a lot of nice fresh this-autumn, plum jam."

"No, I don't want any jam," said Mrs. Ray, seating herself; "but, Nellie, I've been hearing that legally your husband can't do nothing with the Lathbuns."

"Well, that isn't the worst," said Mrs. O'Neil, her face clouding considerably; "what do you think I've up and done? I was so mad I threw that old hair-brush over into the gorge, and I've thereby made Jack liable for a suit of damage for breaking into the luggage a guest leaves without due cause, or else for willful destruction of personal property belonging to another and unoffending party who has reposed trust only to be betrayed. Jack will have to go to the lawyer to-morrow to find out which. Oh, they were slick – those two. They've got the law down fine."

"Well, did you know they're caught?" Mrs. Ray brought this statement forth as the cannon does the cannon ball.

Mrs. O'Neil jumped in her chair. "Caught? No, I did not know it. When?"

"They just told me over at the station that they were arrested about three o'clock. I guess it's true. I hope so."

"Oh, to think of it," said Mrs. O'Neil, "to think of them sleeping here last night and in Geneseo to-night!"

"The complaints will come pouring in," said Mrs. Ray; "everybody has got a bill against 'em. I don't believe they'll be out of jail in years."

Alva turned her face again to the window. She had not thought much of the two unfortunate creatures during the past few hours, and their misery bore in upon her with a vivid, headlong shock.

"And those case-knives, too," Mrs. Ray continued; "did they have 'em on, I wonder."

"Oh, the case-knives don't count," said Mrs. O'Neil; "they were left here by a travelling man. He was around to-day and asked if it was here that he left them. I meant to tell you, but dear, dear, I've had so much to do, seems like."

Mrs. Ray was much taken aback, but quickly recovered herself.

"Oh, well, they could have used a hat-pin just as well. Anyhow, they might have got up in the night and murdered him some way. Mrs. Lathbun could have held him while Hannah Adele just stuck anything handy into him in every direction. I never could see what they had the case-knives for, anyhow, if it wasn't on the chance of some such game. For two women to carry six case-knives instead of combs and tooth-brushes is very suspicious in itself, I think."

"But, they weren't carrying them," said Mrs. O'Neil. "Jack thought they had them for opening windows, but to think of them staying here three weeks and no baggage. It makes me wild."

"Well, you and Mr. O'Neil are easy," said Mrs. Ray; "you're very mooney, both of you. You can't deny that, Nellie, – you and your husband haven't got real good common sense, or you'd have nailed their windows on from the outside the day you first mistrusted them."

"Well, we won't be mooney any more, anyhow," said Mrs. O'Neil; "the drillers came to-day with two freight cars of machinery, but Jack had them pay a week in advance. He says he won't even trust the State after this."

"I don't trust the United States any further than I can see 'em," said Mrs. Ray; "but this has been a good lesson for you, Nellie. You won't be letting any sharper that comes along wear your gran'mother's Paisley shawl while he spies out the road he's going to skip out over next, again."

"Indeed and I won't," said Mrs. O'Neil feelingly.

"Sammy Adams was in to spend the afternoon," Mrs. Ray went on. "We talked the question of my marrying him all over again. He always asks me when he comes for the whole afternoon like that, and he had such a hard time getting it all out to-day with people running in to talk about the Lathbuns every second, that I just had to appreciate the way he stuck to it clear through to the end."

"What did you say?" asked Mrs. O'Neil.

"I didn't say much. I was too busy talking to the others, you know. Yes, indeed. But I was sorry for him. He's so scared sleeping alone in his house for fear of maybe being swindled in his bed before he knows it. And now he's worried for fear the dam is going to drown him unexpectedly, too. They say if that dam is built and does bu'st, the Johnstown Flood won't be in it with Rochester. The folks that want the Falls saved 'll get their chance to say, 'I told you so' then; but that won't help Sammy much."

"What did you say?" Mrs. O'Neil asked again.

"Well, when I got a chance, I told him I'd despise a man who'd let me keep on working as hard as I work now, but that if any man was to ask me to give up the church, or the post-office, or my chickens, that would show he didn't know me, right in the start."

"What did he say to that?" Mrs. O'Neil asked with interest.

"He didn't know what to say at first, but then he's the kind of man that never does know what to say. I declare, Nellie, I do think men that want to marry women act too foolish for words. Yes, indeed. If a man wants to do anything else in the world he gets to work and does it; but if he wants to marry a woman he just sits still and looks silly and leaves it to the woman to be done or not."

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. O'Neil.

"Think so," said Mrs. Ray; "I know so. I've had men acting foolish around where I was all my life. I've tripped over 'em while sweeping, cooking, washing, tending Mr. Ray's family by his second wife, sorting mail, – why, I've had men thinking what a good wife I'd make all my life, and looking so like idiots while they thought it that I wouldn't look at it like they did for any money. They stop by the fence when I'm ploughing, and just grin with thinking what a hired man I'd make. I was cleaning the long aisle carpet at the church last Wednesday, and that minister that's visiting our minister couldn't keep away from the window. When I take my eggs and chickens to market, the buyer down there looks at how I've got those eggs packed and pinches my chickens, and then he turns to me and goodness, but his glance is loving."

"Well, you're a very smart woman, you know," said Mrs. O'Neil.

"I know that; I know it just as well as you do. But I'm a woman, and I'd like to meet one man as was a man. I know men pretty well; I knew Mr. Ray better than he knew himself. Mr. Ray thought he was doing me an honor to marry me, and I knew he wasn't, and I lived with him fifteen years and never threw it in his face once. I let him talk about his ancestors and I never talked about mine. He thought I didn't have any; he never realized I kept still so as to keep from telling such stories as he did. His ancestors! I'd like to know what sort of ancestors he had! If he'd had any ancestors, he'd have been bound to be descended from them, I should think, in which case he wouldn't have been a Ray. The fact that he and his father called themselves Jared and spelt it Jarrod was enough for me; but to make a long story short I'm going to marry Sammy Adams, and I ran down to tell you that at the same time that I brought the letter."

There was an outbreak of exclamations and then a beginning at congratulations, but Mrs. Ray stopped those.

"I don't want congratulations," she said; "there isn't anything to congratulate me about, for I never tried to get him, so I haven't had a success or anything to be proud of. It's just that the dam is so likely to be going to drown him out that he wants to rent my second floor and pay the rent every first Monday in the month. I'm going to go straight on with my life, and continue to save my own money to finish educating Mr. Ray's children by his second wife. We shall go to church together, and he'll sit with me evenings when I ain't too tired, or when he's nervous over case-knives and swindling. He's going to pay me for all his tailoring and all his hair-cuts, but he's to say when he thinks he needs anything new or it's getting too long. He'll buy our potatoes and chickens of me at the regular price, but I'll furnish my own eggs, like I always have."

"It's settled, then?" said Mrs. O'Neil, with a slight smile.

"Yes, it's settled. I don't believe the dam will ever be dug, but I'll marry Sammy all the same."

"You're right about the dam, Mrs. Ray," Alva said, speaking for the first time. "I don't believe it will ever be built, either; the Falls have too many friends. Besides, there must come a time when the God of All will say to our American Mammon, 'So far and no further shalt thou go,' and I believe the time is now and that the place is here."

"Well, I don't know about all that," said Mrs. Ray; "but Josiah Bates drove the surveyors home yesterday, and he gathered from them that if they built that dam and made that lake, the lake was pretty sure to burst out around back of the Wiley place – that low place you know – and we'd have a new waterfall in through the Wiley cow-pasture, even if we didn't have nothing worse."

"Goodness me!" cried Mrs. O'Neil, "what would the Wileys say to that!"

"I don't know what the Wileys would say to that," said Mrs. Ray; "but it made me know what I'd say to Sammy. Yes, indeed. If there isn't going to be any dam, the summers here are going to go on exactly as they used to, and I've got to have a man to bring up my ice! You know my motto, 'He moves in a mysterious way,' and I can see now why the Lathbuns and the dam both come. I had a dreadful time last summer getting my ice up, and as long as everybody's been betting all along that I'd always marry Sammy some day, I might as well do it now as any time. Yes, indeed."

"You are very sensible," said Alva, rising, "and I'm sure that you will be very happy. I congratulate you." She held out her hand. "Good-bye."

"I'm sorry you're going so soon," said Mrs. Ray, clasping it warmly, "you've meant such a lot of cancellation, and then I've got very fond of you, too."

Alva smiled. "I'm only going out on the bridge just now for a little," she said, turning to Mrs. O'Neil. "I'll be back shortly."

Mrs. O'Neil glanced towards the window. "It's snowing harder and harder," she said; "wrap up warm."

Alva went quietly out. When they were alone, Mrs. Ray shook her head. "She looks bad," she said; "I'm not sure that she didn't care for him, after all. She's got that mooney look. I know just the look. I'd have looked just that way by spring, if I'd taken Gran'ma Benton and the parrot. I'm glad I've decided to marry Sammy, instead."

"You won't take them, then?" asked Mrs. O'Neil.

"No, I couldn't stand Sammy and a parrot at once, and then, too, he might quarrel with the parrot, or Gran'ma Benton might make trouble between Sammy and me. I never allowed any one to make trouble between Mr. Ray and me, and I won't allow trouble this time, either. If I'm going to be unhappy married, I won't marry. That's flat."

"I wonder if Jack knows they're arrested!" said Mrs. O'Neil, thoughtfully.

"I stopped in the bar on purpose," said Mrs. Ray, "I thought he ought to know right away."

"Was he there?" asked the wife.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Ray, calmly, "but I did what I could, Nellie, and nobody can be expected to pass that, you know."