e day it was, while my mind was
still warm. If I had waited over night, I might have seen more clear.

"Father," said I; we were sitting in the kitchen after supper; it was a
summer evening, soft and fair, but a little fire burned low on the
hearth, and he sat near it, having grown chilly this last year.

"Father, would you think it possible to change your condition?"

He turned his eyes on me, with an asking look.

"Would you think it possible to marry Abby Rock?" I asked; and felt my
heart sink, somehow, even with saying the words. My father hardly seemed
to understand at first; he repeated, "Marry Abby Rock!" as if he saw no
sense in the words; then it came to him, and I saw a great fire of anger
grow in his eyes, till they were like flame in the dusk.

"I am a married man!" he said, slowly. "Are you a child, or lost to
decency, that you speak of this to a married man?"

He paused, but I found nothing to say. He went on, his voice, that was
even when he began, dropping deeper, and sinking as I never heard it.

"The Lord in His providence saw fit to take away my wife, your mother,
before sickness, or age, or sorrow could strike her. I was left, to
suffer some small part of what my sins merit, in the land of my sojourn.
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the
Lord. But because my wife Mary,--my wife Mary" (he lingered over the
words, loving them so), "is a glorified spirit in another world, and I
am a prisoner here, is she any less my wife, and I her faithful husband?
You are my son, and hers,--hers, Jakey; but if you ever say such words
to me again, one house will not hold us both." He turned his head away,
and I heard him murmuring under his breath, "Mary! Mary!" as I have said
his way was; and I was silent and ashamed, fearing to speak lest I make
matters worse; and so presently I slipped out and left him; and my fine
plan came to naught, save to make two sad hearts sadder than they were.

But it was to be! Looking back, Melody, after fifty years, I am
confident that it was the will of God, and was to be. In three weeks
from that night, I was in France.

I pass over the wonder of the voyage; the sorrowful parting, too, that
came before it, though I left all well, and my father to all appearances
fully himself. I pass over these, straight to the night when Yvon and I
arrived at his home in the south of France. We had been travelling
several days since landing, and had stopped f