his plaid about his shoulders, and dreamed on happily, of the old days, when the heart was young, before sorrow had embittered his life, dreamed of a life of love with Mary by his side, dreamed and dreamed far into the morning, and so Jean had found him and left him to his slumbers. Suddenly his eyes opened, but he did not move. He sat there feeling a little cramped and stiff, until hazy recollections dawned slowly upon his mind, then he raised himself from his crouching position, and leaning out of the window gazed with eyes that were wonderfully luminous at the blossom which was just beyond his eager reach. He inhaled deep breaths of its fragrant perfume, a smile of loving tenderness on his lips. All at once a feeling of sudden depression tightened around his heart as he noticed for the first time the deepening gloom without, felt the lowering temperature of the atmosphere, which chilled and depressed him so strangely. He looked again at the swiftly dancing flower, and his heart stopped beating for an instant, while a look of pain, of heart-breaking sorrow, darkened his face—the white petals were dropping one by one, and were being whirled and tossed madly through the air like flakes of snow. He watched in silence, as the wind, with reckless abandon, tore them out and scattered them here and there, some sailing merrily out of sight—one dashing through the open window and against the white, agonized face of the suffering man, clinging to it for a moment, in a sweet caress, a last embrace, then slipping down—down, till it found rest on the floor, where soon it was dead and forgotten. As the last snowy petal left its stem, leaving it looking so bare and pitiful nestling in among the leaves as though ashamed of its nakedness, a hard sob of anguish escaped his lips, for it seemed as if each petal contained a part of the soul of his loved one, and leaning his face against the sash, he gave himself up to the crushing sorrow that submerged his soul and plunged him once more into black despair. It seemed as if the last link that had bound her to earth, and to him, was at last broken and she had passed on out of his life forever; not even the rose was left to preserve as a sacred memory to look at occasionally, to bring her presence nearer. And now no more such roses would bloom for him, not in this life anyway, and so he drearily mused in hopeless sorrow.