rty by frisky boys of the vicinity, the
management had installed there a caretaker with his family, who was also,
as weather favored, to superintend some repairs to the building. It had
been arranged by Bayne, previous to his departure, that the eldest son, a
stalwart youth of twenty, should sleep in a room at the bungalow, having
his rifle loaded and pistols at hand, provided against any menace of
disturbance. Thus the winter closed in upon a seclusion and solitude of
funereal intimations.

The winds were loosed and rioted through the lonely recesses of the
craggy ravines and the valley with a wild and eerie blare; the leaves,
rustling shrilly, all sere now, so long the weather had held dry, fled in
myriads before the gusts. Soon they lay on the ground in dense masses,
and in the denudation of the trees the brilliant tints of the little
coat, swinging so high in the blast, caught the eye of a wandering
hunter. At first sight, he thought it but a flare of the autumnal
foliage, and gave it no heed, but some days afterward its persistence
struck his attention. It seemed a tragic and piteous thing when he
discovered its nature. He cut the tree down, too high it was lodged for
other means to secure it, and after the county officials had examined it,
he brought it to the mother.

Over it Lillian shed such tears as have bedewed the relics of the dead
since first this sad old world knew loss, since first a grave was filled.
How unavailing! How lacerating! How consoling! She began to feel a
plaintive sympathy for all the bereaved of earth, and her heart and mind
grew more submissive as she remembered that only for this cause Jesus
wept, albeit a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

The little coat, so gayly decorated, reminded her of another coat of many
colors, its splendor testimony of the gentlest domestic affection,
brought stained with blood to another parent long ago, to interpret the
cruel mystery of a son's death. And after all these centuries she felt
drawn near to Jacob in the tender realization of a common humanity, and
often repeated his despairing words, "I shall go down into the grave unto
my son mourning."

Then her heart was pierced with self-pity for the contrast of his
gratuitous affliction with her hopeless grief. So happy in truth was he,
despite his thought of woe, that he should have lamented as dead his son,
who was so full of life the while, whose future on earth was destined to
be so long an