come to see my body before it's
given to the burning: do not come to my funeral. I don't want a
funeral, for though I am not without a religion of my own, it's one
that does not lend itself to ceremonies. As for the mystery of the
sea, it and all other mysteries which are hidden from us now will
soon, I trust, be clear to

Your ever loyal, faithful friend,
JOHN HANNAFORD.

Long before she reached the end tears were raining down Mary's face. She
could not read the letter aloud, yet she wanted the others to know what
Hannaford had said. On an impulse she handed the closely covered sheet
to Mrs. Winter.

Rose took the letter, and read it out, not quite steadily. For a few
seconds no one spoke, when she had finished. But at last she asked in a
veiled voice what was the verse Hannaford wished to have on the tablet.
The question seemed to Mary the only one she could have answered at that
moment.

Almost in a whisper she began to repeat the verse of Fiona Macleod, for
which, she remembered, Hannaford had begged twice over, as they two sat
on the palm-roofed terrace built over the sea:

"'Play me a lulling chant, O Anthem-Maker,
Out of the fall of lonely seas and the wind's sorrow.
Behind are the burning glens of the sunset sky
Where, like blown ghosts, the seamews
Wail their desolate sea dirges.
Make now of these a lulling chant,
O Anthem-Maker.'"

"That is all?" asked George Winter.

"That is all," Mary echoed.

"I think I understand why a man might want just those words for a last
lullaby," Vanno said. "You'll do as he asks, I know, Mary, about the urn
and the tablet with the verse, and going there to sit and think of him
sometimes."

"Oh, yes, I will do that," she replied quickly. "But--I don't think I
can do the other thing. I _can't_ live in his house. Anyway, I can't
live in it with you, Vanno. It would be----" She did not finish. To have
ended the sentence would have been the same as telling Hannaford's
secret.

"I understand," Vanno said. But it was in Mary's mind that he did not
and could not wholly understand. She did not even want him to
understand. "You needn't live there," he went on. "Yet you can visit the
place sometimes, from our 'castle in the air'; and maybe we can think of
a way to use the house, if you accept it, which Hannaford would
approve."

"You can