225

XVIII--THE PASSING OF FIDO 238

XIX--THE DREAMS COME TRUE 253

XX--PARDON 273

XXI--THE PERILS OF THE CITY 286

XXII--AUTUMN LEAVES 299

XXIII--LETTERS TO CONSTANCE 313

XXIV--THE BELLS IN THE TOWER 327

Flower of the Dusk

[Illustration: "Secretly, too, both were ashamed, having come unawares
upon knowledge that was not meant for them."--_Page 82._
_From a painting by Clinton Balmer_]

I

A Maker of Songs

[Sidenote: Sunset]

The pines, darkly purple, towered against the sunset. Behind the hills,
the splendid tapestry glowed and flamed, sending far messages of light
to the grey East, where lay the sea, crooning itself to sleep. Bare
boughs dripped rain upon the sodden earth, where the dead leaves had so
long been hidden by the snow. The thousand sounds and scents of Spring
at last had waked the world.

The man who stood near the edge of the cliff, quite alone, and carefully
feeling the ground before him with his cane, had chosen to face the
valley and dream of the glory that, perchance, trailed down in living
light from some vast loom of God's. His massive head was thrown back, as
though he listened, with a secret sense, for music denied to those who
see.

[Sidenote: Joyful Memories]

He took off his hat and stray gleams came through the deepening shadows
to rest, like an aureole, upon his silvered hair. Remembered sunsets,
from beyond the darkness of more than twenty years, came back to him
with divine beauty and diviner joy. Mnemosyne, that guardian angel of
the soul, brought from her treasure-house gifts of laughter and tears;
the laughter sweet with singing, and the bitterness of the tears
eternally lost in the Water of Forgetfulness.

Slowly, the light died. Dusk came upon the valley and crept softly to
the hills. Mist drifted in from the sleeping sea, and the hush of night
brooded over the river as it murmured through the plain. A single star
uplifted its exquisite lamp against the afterglow, near the veiled ivory
of the crescent moon.

Sighing, the man turned away. "Perhaps," he thought, whimsically, as he
went cautiously down the path, searching out every step of the way,
"there was no sunset at all."

The road was clear until he came to a fallen tree, over which he stepped
easily. The new softness of the soil had, for him, its own deep meaning