end to it."

"Why, that would make no difference. You would 'tend to it because you
promised. You would follow the Farthest Lantern, as I will explain
presently."

Queerly he looks round, studying the flicker of fire, the cozy room,
even the clothes he is wearing; then the uplifted old face under the
white hair with its expression of listening to things he cannot hear.

"I promise," he says, and laughs in a fierce puzzled way--the only laugh
ever heard from him. And he has forgotten and Molly has forgotten to
name the price to be paid for his trouble.

"Here is a pen you may fit in the broken holder," she says; "write what
I cannot for the palsy in my hand. Now, as I tell you--'t is the letter
of the Farthest Lantern--the lantern which beckons to duty."

But Tim fumbles the pen. "I never learned how," he explains, "to write
the letters"; and on the instant feels the hand at his shoulder tremble
and clutch, looks up a moment to see two great tears roll down her
cheeks--and curses with a mighty smother in the breast of him.

"You need not curse," says Molly faintly; "'t is the will of the saints
after all."

She nods, listening, and then the boy watches her glide from the room,
and for a long time sits on the hearth before the fire, his chin locked
in his hands.

So after all it has come about that the message of the Farthest Lantern
is never written at all. And neither is it spoken, for Tim scratching on
the door of Molly's room at daybreak receives no cheery word of
greeting; and after a moment's reflection entering with the lamp he
finds her silent forever.

Without reverence he stares at the face on the pillow, having no
knowledge of death's ghostly significance; and scowling he brushes away
the cold beads which gather on his forehead. 'T is certain that an
outcast in a strange house with a dead person will be marked for
suspicion by the neighbors; and Tim Cannon has had cause enough to avoid
the police. Yet queerly enough he sets the lamp, shining brightly, by
the bedside, and sometimes seated and sometimes moving about, but never
leaving the chill room for the warm fireplace next door, he keeps her
company.

One neighbor hears of Molly's death from a vagabond at her door in the
morning and runs to call to others "Come, Aunt Molly is dead." On their
way to the Regan cottage they agree that the vagabond is a suspicious
character and look about for him. But Tim has disappeared; nor do they
see him again un