"This," she said, again addressing the youth, "I meant for you. It pleased _me_, and I thought perhaps you would like it--and won't you lay it on your shelf nearest to your cross, the one we made. It has a pretty name--THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS. See, I wrote your name in it after I came home that night. _You_ could write a better book"--he shuddered, and half turned away--she observed his look and motion, and said quickly, "Yes, you will. And all the world will love you. But you will keep this, if only for my sake. And don't ever, _ever_ think, George Waldron, that I wouldn't have been proud to have taken your arm and walked with you in the broad daylight through our streets. I was very tired and sick that night, or I wouldn't have let you go home without convincing you. Do you believe me?" "Yes," he said, and something of the calmness passed from her face into his, as he bent over her. "Do you know, can you guess, what my cross in this life is? _I_ know, for it is laid on me already. Oh, Ella, if you could live, it would not be with me as it must be now!" Perhaps she had grown too weak to answer him, for she pressed his hands closely between her own, and made no other reply. * * * * * He saw her only once after that day. They had removed her from the bed, and from her pleasant chamber then. She was in the little parlor of the parsonage--and the shadow of a cross was lying on her sweet, pale face, for her coffin was near the mantle, and on that stood the "symbol" which _they_ had fashioned one bright October day. He only looked upon her for a moment on that morning, but the brief glance was more than he could bear composedly, and the widowed boy went out hastily from the little group of mourners, to weep such tears as he could never, never in his life weep again. * * * * * He kept that vow, made in the frenzy of despair, religiously. Did he not? Question his witness--it is not voiceless--it stands unimpeachable at this moment; on a now populous sea-side, there, in the very place where, one dull November night, the first act of a most sad life-drama was read, in a wild and dreary solitude, by two young, dreaming children. It stands a SEAMEN'S CHAPEL, whose corner-stone _he_ laid, whose foundation is the rock whereon Ella stood that night. A cross surmounts its spire, and if you walk along the pleasant beach its shadow will be sure to fall upon you. Many a day and many a night George Waldron walked there: and this is his monument on earth.