e."

She was thinking of the long, weary days of pain before her that she
must face now without The Pilot's touch and smile and voice.

"Me, too," said Bill, thinking of the days before him. He could have
said nothing better. Gwen looked in his face a moment, then said:

"We'll help each other," and Bill, swallowing hard, could only nod his
head in reply. Once more they looked upon The Pilot, leaning down and
lingering over him, and then Gwen said quietly:

"Take me away, Bill," and Bill carried her into the outer room. Turning
back I caught a look on The Duke's face so full of grief that I could
not help showing my amazement. He noticed and said:

"The best man I ever knew, Connor. He has done something for me too.
. . . I'd give the world to die like that."

Then he covered the face.

We sat Gwen's window, Bill, with Gwen in his arms, and I watching.
Down the sloping, snow-covered hill wound the procession of sleighs and
horsemen, without sound of voice or jingle of bell till, one by one,
they passed out of our sight and dipped down into the canyon. But we
knew every step of the winding trail and followed them in fancy through
that fairy scene of mystic wonderland. We knew how the great elms and
the poplars and the birches clinging to the snowy sides interlaced their
bare boughs into a network of bewildering complexity, and how the cedars
and balsams and spruces stood in the bottom, their dark boughs weighted
down with heavy white mantles of snow, and how every stump and fallen
log and rotting stick was made a thing of beauty by the snow that had
fallen so gently on them in that quiet spot. And we could see the rocks
of the canyon sides gleam out black from under overhanging snow-banks,
and we could hear the song of the Swan in its many tones, now under
an icy sheet, cooing comfortably, and then bursting out into sunlit
laughter and leaping into a foaming pool, to glide away smoothly
murmuring its delight to the white banks that curved to kiss the dark
water as it fled. And where the flowers had been, the violets and the
wind-flowers and the clematis and the columbine and all the ferns and
flowering shrubs, there lay the snow. Everywhere the snow, pure, white,
and myriad-gemmed, but every flake a flower's shroud.

Out where the canyon opened to the sunny, sloping prairie, there they
would lay The Pilot to sleep, within touch of the canyon he loved, with
all its sleeping things. And there he lies to this time.