The wind had continued to rise, but the thunder had passed on, and the shower was almost over when Bayard’s bearers lifted him across the threshold of Mrs. Granite’s door. At that moment one belated flash ran over earth and sea and sky. It was a red flash, and a mighty one. By its crimson light the fishermen saw his face for that last instant; it lay turned over on the stretcher quietly, towards his wife. The red color dyed her bridal white, and the terrible composure of her attitude was revealed; her hand was fast in his; she seemed to communicate, God knew how, with the unconscious man. The flash went out, and darkness fell again. “Then God shut the door,” muttered an old and religious fisherman who stood weeping by the fence, among the larkspurs. * * * * * The wind went down, and the tide went out. Bayard’s pulse and breath fell with the sea, and the June dawn came. The tide came in, and the wind arose, and it was evening. Then he moaned, and turned, and it was made out that he tried to say, “Helen?--was Helen hurt?” Then the soul came into his eyes, and they saw her. * * * * * He did not sink away that day, nor the next, and the evening and the morning were the third day in the chamber where death and life made duel for him. He suffered, it is hard to think how much; but the fine courage in his habit of living clung on. The injury was not, necessarily, a fatal one. The great consulting surgeon called from Boston said. “The patient may live.” He added: “But the vitality is low; it has been sapped to the roots. And the lung is weak. There has been a strain sometime; the organ has received a lesion.” Then Job Slip, when he heard this, thought of the minister’s cough, which dated from that battle with the surf off Ragged Rock. And the value of his own cheap life, bought at a price so precious, overwhelmed the man. He would have died a hundred deaths for the pastor. Instead, he had to do the harder thing. It was asked of him to live, and to remember. In all those days (they were eight in number) Jane Granite’s small, soft eyes took on a strange expression; it was not unlike that we see in a dog who is admitted to the presence of a sick or injured master. God was merciful to Jane. The pastor had come back. To live or to die, he had come. It was hers again to work, to watch, to run, to slave for him; she looked at the new wife without a pang of envy; she came or went under Helen’s orders; she poured out her heart in that last torrent of self-forgetful service, and thanked God for the precious chance, and asked no more. She had the spaniel suffering, but she had the spaniel happiness. * * * * * For seven days and nights he lay in his shabby rooms, a royal sufferer. The Christ above his bed looked down with solemn tenderness; in his moments of consciousness (but these were few) he glanced at the picture.