ocks, leaving
Tess and the brindle dog amid the falling shadows.

Spent with emotion, the squatter girl heard the retreating footsteps of
her friend die away in the twilight. Then she pushed the dog gently from
her lap and laid herself down upon the rocks and pillowed her aching
head upon his body.

Gradually the tender melancholy of the dying day touched her mood with
subtle sympathy and soothed her troubled spirit. Rapt in rueful revery,
she followed mechanically the flight of a flock of birds. Like swift
shadows flitting over the water, they dipped and winged upward and away,
out of her vision.

Frederick had gone from her life almost as completely and as suddenly as
those birds had disappeared from her sight. How mercilessly short had
been her days of happiness, those days threaded and inter-threaded with
her husband's love.

The sun had set and the purples and reds were fading from the fleecy
clouds in the eastern sky. The gloaming grew in caressing cadences up
from the limpid lake to the ragged rocks. The night winds blew gently
down the hill side, the swaying leaves were whispering "hush, hush," and
the surface of the lake, shimmering in the mellow light of the rising
moon, was flecked here and there into silvery sparkles. The airs of
evening fluttered the ringlets upon her forehead and enveloped her hot
body in cooling comfort. Responsive to the quiet beauty about her, the
turmoil of her thoughts subsided. The sharp anguish which had at first
stunned her was becoming but a dull ache, permitting her to think
connectedly.

This place and this hour held the most vital associations of her young
life. Here in the gathering gloom, Frederick had wooed and won her, and
had spent with her many of the too few hours of her wedded bliss. Upon
such another evening, she had made him the promises that had led to her
only deceptions of Daddy Skinner, and here, four short days ago, her
husband had murdered her joy.

Reflecting upon her plight, its hopelessness well nigh overwhelmed her.
Through the utter desolution of her life rang the haunting, words of the
Cantata she'd heard sung last Eastertide in the Big Ithaca Church.

"Oh, was there ever loneliness like this?"

Over and over the melody repeated itself, insistently recalling the
Master's agony in the garden, and lifting her thoughts slowly upward
away from herself to His ultimate triumph and glory.

Betrayed and deserted by the man that loved her, she fixed her