om in her father's
house, had a heavier cross.

Her mother tiptoed into the room, the morning after her arrival, and
stood beside her until she opened her eyes.

"Elick is outside, Matildy. Shall I tell him to come in?"

She shook her head, and closed her eyes again wearily.

The old woman went out, and confronted her gray-haired husband
helplessly.

"It beats me, Josiah, what he could 'a' said or done that she's took to
heart so, after what she's put up with all these years."

* * * * *

Mr. Anderson preached the funeral sermon very touchingly, when it was
all over. The tears came into his young eyes, and there were treacherous
breaks in his rhetoric as he talked.

"This sister in Israel, whose lovely and self-sacrificing life has just
ended so peacefully, lived to see the dearest wish of her heart
gratified,--the conversion of the husband of her youth to the faith of
her fathers. We are told that some have died of grief, but if this frail
heart ceased to beat from any excess of emotion, it must have been, my
friends, from the fullness of joy,--the joy 'that cometh in the
morning.'"

But Alex Randall knew better.

IDY.

I.

Senora Gonzales was leaning upon the corral gate in the shade of the
pomegranates, looking out over the lake. The lake itself was not more
placid than the senora's face under her black rebozo. Perhaps a long
life of leaning and gazing had given her those calm, slow-moving eyes,
full of the wisdom of unfathomable ignorance. The landscape on the
opposite shore was repeated in the water below, as if to save her the
trouble of raising her heavily fringed lids. To the southward a line of
wild geese gleamed snow-white, like the crest of a wave. Half a dozen
dogs were asleep in the smoothly swept dooryard behind her, and a young
Mexican, whose face was pitted by smallpox, like the marks of raindrops
in dry sand, leaned against the gnarled trunk of a trellised grapevine,
clasping his knees, and sending slow wreaths of smoke from his
cigarette. The barley in the field behind the house was beginning to
head, and every breath of wind stirred it in glistening waves. Beyond
the field shone a yellow mist of wild mustard. The California spring,
more languorous, even with its hint of moisture, than the cloudless
summer, sent a thousand odors adrift upon the air. Even the smell of
garlic hanging about the senora could not drown the scent of the
orange-blooms, a