. My mother's spirit was not there--I knew that--and
yet I could not bear to think of those tender lips, those loving hands
going into the dark. It was a harsh bed for one so gentle and so dear.

Back to the Homestead we drove--back to an empty shell. The place in
which Isabel Garland's wish had been law for so many years was now
desolate and drear, and return would have been impossible for me had it
not been for the presence of my wife, whose serene soul was my comfort
and my stay. "You have done all that a son could do," she insisted, and
it was a comfort to have her say this even though I knew that it was not
true, her faith in me and her youth and beauty partly redeemed me from
the awful emptiness of that home. Without her (and all that she
represented) my father and I would have been victims of a black despair.

I had never possessed a definite belief in immortality and yet, as we
gathered about our table that night, I could not rid myself of a feeling
that my mother was in her room, and that she might at any moment cough,
or stir, or call to me. Realizing with appalling force that so far as my
philosophy went our separation was eternal, I nevertheless hoped that
her spirit was with us at that moment, I did not know it--I desired it.
In the sense which would have made belief a solace and relief, I was
agnostic.

"How strange it all seems!" my father exclaimed, and on his face lay
such lines of dismay as I had never seen written there before. "It seems
as though I ought to go and wheel her in to dinner."

I marvel now, as I marveled then, at the buoyant helpfulness, the brave
patience of my wife in the presence of her stricken and bewildered
household. She sorrowed but she kept her calm judgment, and set about
restoring the interrupted routine of our lives. Putting away all signs
of the gray intruder whose hands had scattered the ashes of ruin across
our floor, she called on me to aid in uniting our broken circle. Under
her influence I soon regained a certain composure. With a realization
that it was not fair that she should bear all the burden of the family
reorganization, I turned from death and faced the future with her. On
her depended the continuation of our family. She was its hope and its
saving grace.

BOOK II

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Summer in the High Country

My first morning in the old Homestead without my mother was so poignant
with its sense of loss, so rich with memories both sweet and sor