Then as I lent myself more and more to the contemplation of that home picture, how restful and happy it grew! but poor old Wallencamp--for we were nearing the little settlement now, and the sun was fast westering--poor, squalid, solitary, beautiful Wallencamp, as I looked down upon it from the brow of Stony Hill, thrilled me with a troubled sense of some diviner, some half-comprehended glory. The crimson glow had not quite faded in the sky when I took my last walk across the fields to where the new grave had been made on the hillside. This is the new burying-ground of the Wallencampers; the old one lies a mile farther up the river, near the Indian encampment. Here I saw more than one simple slab, bearing the name of Cradlebow. Here little Bess lies, too. The hill, meet for such sublime repose, looks ever calmly on the humble, straggling homes of the Wallencampers below, and sees the lonely river winding near, and hears, by night and day, the monody of deeper waters. I thought the voice of that great ocean of restlessness sounding along the shore might quiet my unrest, but the beat of the waves, the growing gloom of that still evening hour, oppressed me with a feeling unutterably sad. I could not bear it, at last. It seemed as though another deep was rising and breaking in my heart, the flood of proud, half-stifled passion waking in one awful moment to overwhelm me. No light upon that sea--but hope wronged, the mockery of death for yearning love, the unguided clash of drifting human lives! An agony of blindness swam before my eyes. I felt my weak hands clutching at the grass, and gasped, as though it had been indeed in the blindness and pain of physical death, the prayer wrung from my selfish need. But the answer was of infinite love and compassion. It came to me then--not as some grave revelation of truth to the "enlightened seeker," but like the kiss or peace to a tired child, a door mysteriously opened to the self-bound captive, to one ignorant, the light shining along a plain, straight way. And the doubt and terror and anguish went out of the world; even the sorrowless farewell of frozen lips changed to tender benediction. When I looked up at last, wondering, peaceful, my face wet with happy tears, the stars had come out in the sky, and, down below, the windows of the Ark were shining. The faint murmur of a song was borne up to me. The Wallencampers had gathered at the Ark to celebrate our last "meeting" together, and I went down to join them. * * * * *