just as she had left him last night. He was leaning back in the angle of
the slightly splintered trellis, his colorless face gray, save where a
blue line ran down his cheek from a blue-black burn on his temple, his
colorless eyes looking straight before him; the discus he had stooped to
pick up in the twilight last night clasped in his colorless hands; his
colorless life race run. His clothing, soaked by the midnight storm,
clung wet and sagging about his shrunken form. But the rain-beaten
rose-vines had showered his gray head with a halo of pink petals, and
about his feet were drifts of fallen blossoms flowing out upon the rich
green sod. Nature in loving pity had gently decked him with her
daintiest hues, as if a world of lavish color would wipe away in a sweep
of June-time beauty the memory of the lost drab years.

III

HITCHING THE WAGON TO A STAR

Behind the most expensive mourner's crape to be had in Philadelphia
Jerusha Darby hid the least mournful of faces. Not that she had not been
shocked that one bolt out of all that summer storm-cloud, barely
splintering the rose-arbor, should strike the head leaning against it
with a blow so faint and yet so fatal; nor that she would not miss
Cornelius and find it very inconvenient to fill his place in her
business management. Every business needs some one to fetch and carry
and play the watch-dog. And in these days of expensive labor watch-dogs
come high and are not always well trained. But everybody must go
sometime. That is, everybody else. To Mrs. Darby's cast of mind the
scheme of death and final reckoning as belonging to a general experience
was never intended for her individually. After all, things work out all
right under Providential guidance. Eugene Wellington was a fortunate
provision of an all-wise Providence. Eugene had some of his late
cousin's ability. He would come in time to fill the vacant chair by the
roll-top desk in the city banking and business house. Moreover, to the
eyes of age he was a thousandfold more interesting and resourceful than
the colorless quiet one whose loss would be felt of course, of course.

The reddest roses of "Eden" bloomed the next June on Cornelius Darby's
grave, the brightest leaves of autumn covered him warmly from the
winter's snows, and the places that had never felt his living presence
missed him no more forever.

There was a steady downpour of summer rain on the day following the
funeral at "Eden." Mrs. Darby