One of those swift, ghostly fogs that spring without warning from the ocean was sweeping inland, and as sunlight smote the advancing pillars of mist it seemed transmuted into battlements and towers of some city of silver. Strained maternal ears had caught the boy's faint cry, and Nona knelt, clasping him close, resting his head on her bosom. His wide and wondering eyes were fixed on the strange, shining wall drawing swiftly nearer. "The gates of heaven! Mother, mother----" A moment later the chill waves of mist flowed over them, blotting out the sun. Under that grey pall, daisy-dotted, the blue eyes closed; the pure, lovely face, still smiling, lay white against his mother's cheek. * * * * * Not always comes imperial death as pacificator; now and then the flame of vengeance leaps through the shroud of shadows, and sometimes open graves typify wider, deeper chasms that know no closing. There are natures who prefer total surrender rather than any sharing of that which they hold dearest; and of such was the pallid, dry-eyed mother, lying hour after hour on the bed where her fragile boy slept his last sleep. His head rested on her right arm, and with her left hand she had drawn his icy fingers inside her dress, trying to warm them on the breast where in infancy they toyed. Since the moment she had snatched him from the meadow couch of daisies and borne him unaided to the farmhouse, no one was allowed to touch him, and the angel who called and guided the young soul to God was more welcome than the human father daring to claim him. During the long night of her last vigil, the priest, pacing an adjoining room, wondered at the stern repression of her grief; and only once, through the half-open door, came a frantic cry, ending in a low, quivering wail. "Mother's man! Mother's own pretty--pretty--darling baby! Oh----" An hour later, when he ventured to re-enter the room, he knew the one passionate outbreak signalled her final surrender. She had lifted the little wasted form from the bed and laid him in a coffin resting on a low table; covering all but the delicate, chiselled face and shining hair with a thick shroud of daisies. Now, with hands locked in her lap, she sat leaning her head against the coffin. Tears he could not repress fell as the father bent down to the casket, but she put her arm across it, barring him. "Don't! You must not touch my baby." Sinking to his knees he put his hand on the fingers lying in her lap. "Oh, Nona! Eleven years ago to-night!" She pushed his hand aside, and when he bowed his head on her knee, she moved her chair back to avoid the touch. "My wife----"