to her mother-in-law, but she laid down her book and
came to welcome Bell, detecting at once the agitation in her manner and
asking if she had had bad news from Robert.

"No, Robert is at home; I have just come from there, and he told me--oh!
Helen, can you bear it?--Mark is dead--shot twice as he jumped from the
train taking him to another prison, Robert saw it, and knew that he was
dead."

Bell could get no further, for Helen, who had never fainted in her life,
did so now, lying senseless so long that the physician began to think it
would be a mercy if she never came back to life, for her reason, he
fancied, had fled. But Helen did come back to life with reason
unimpaired, and insisted upon hearing every detail of the dreadful
story, both from Bell and Tom. The latter confirmed all Lieutenant
Reynolds had said, besides adding many items of his own. Mark was dead,
there could be no doubt of it; but with the tenacity of a strong,
hopeful nature, the mother clung to the illusion that possibly the ball
stunned, instead of killing--that he would yet come back; and many a
time, as the days went by, that mother started at a step upon the walk
or ring of the bell, which she fancied might be his, hearing him
sometimes calling in the night storm for her to let him in, and hurrying
down to the door only to be disappointed, and go back to her lonely room
to weep the dark night through.

With Helen there were no such illusions. After talking calmly and
rationally with both Robert and Tom, she knew her husband was dead, and
never watched and waited for him as his mother did. She had heard from
Mark's companions in suffering all they had to tell, of his captivity,
and his love for her which manifested itself in so many different ways.
Passionately she had wept over the tress of faded hair which Tom Tubbs
brought to her, saying: "He cut it from his head just before we left the
prison, and told me if he never got home and I did, to give the lock to
you, and say that all was well between him and God--that your prayers
had saved him. He wanted you to know that, because, he said, it would
comfort you most of all."

And it did comfort her, so that she could almost say with a full heart:
"Thy will be done," when she looked up at the clear, wintry heavens and
thought that her lost one was there. It was her first real trial, and it
crushed her with its magnitude so that she could not submit at once, and
many a cry of desolate agony broke