atter was to leave in the morning, and when they would meet again
neither could tell. Few were the parting words they spoke, for the great
common sorrow welling up from their hearts; but when at last they said
good-by, the bond of friendship between them was more strongly cemented
than ever, and Katy long remembered Marian's parting words:

"God bless you, Katy Cameron! You have been a bright sun spot in my
existence since I first knew you, even though you have stirred some of
the worst impulses of my nature. I am a better woman for having known
you. God bless you, Katy Cameron!"

CHAPTER XLIX.

MOURNING.

The grand funeral which Mrs. Cameron once had planned for Katy was a
reality at last, but the breathless form lying so cold and still in the
darkened rooms at No. ---- Fifth Avenue was not Katy's, but that of a
soldier embalmed--an only son brought back to his father's house amid
sadness and tears. They had taken him there rather than to his own
house, because it was the wish of his mother, who, however hard and
selfish she might be to others, had loved and idolized her son, mourning
for him truly, and forgetting in her grief to care how grand the funeral
was, and feeling only a passing twinge when told that Mrs. Lennox had
come from Silverton to pay the last tribute of respect to her late
son-in-law. Some little comfort it was to have her boy lauded as a
faithful soldier and to hear the commendations lavished upon him during
the time he lay in state, with his uniform around him; but when the
whole was over, and in the gray of the wintry afternoon her husband
returned from burying his son, there came over her a feeling of such
desolation as she had never known--a feeling which drove her at last to
the little room upstairs, where sat a lonely man, his head bowed upon
his hands, and his tears dropping silently upon the hearthstone as he,
too, thought of the vacant parlor below and the new-made grave at
Greenwood.

"Oh, husband, comfort me, for our only boy is dead," fell from her lips
as she tottered to her husband, who opened his arms to receive her,
forgetting all the years which had made her the cold, proud woman, who
needed no sympathy, and remembering only that bright, green summer when
she was first his bride, and came to him for comfort in every little
grievance, just as now she came in this great, crushing sorrow.

He did not tell her she was reaping what she had sown, that but for her
pride and d