When Ellis went away it was to the sound of jollity. He came back to a town shrouded in mourning. Every store was closed, and symbols of grief adorned most of them. Wat Harlow, with a delicacy Ellis would scarcely have expected of him, had ordered purple ribbon and white flowers to tie with the crape. Silent and grief-stricken, the town stood waiting the arrival of the train. When it came, the coffin was lifted by loving hands and carried the ten long blocks to the church. No cold hearse rattled his precious body, but, even as the body of Robert Louis Stevenson was held by human touch until the last office was done, so was Ellis Hinton, the country printer, carried to his last repose by the hands of his friends. Not until Jap looked for a long, anguished moment upon the flower-massed grave did he realize that he was alone, that he was drifting, that he had no anchor. Something of this he expressed to Flossy, between dry sobs, when they had left Ellis alone in the secluded little cemetery. Her eyes burned with a strange, maternal light as she comforted the boy whose grief was of the fibre of her own. "Ellis knew that you would feel that way," she said gently, "and because of that, he made a will that is to be read to-night. Wat Harlow has it. Until it is read, I want you not to trouble." That evening, with all the important men of the town assembled in the big front room of the _Herald_ office, Wat Harlow read brokenly the last "reading notice" of Bloomtown's sleeping hero. It was written in the familiar scrawl that everybody knew, with scarcely a waver in its lines to tell that a dying hand had penned it: "I am going a long journey, but not so far that I cannot vision your growth. It was the labor of love to plan for this time. In the gracious wisdom of God it was not intended that I should enjoy it with you; but as Moses looked into his promised land, so through the eyes of the _Herald_ I have seen mine. And God, in His wonderful way, has sent you another optimist to do the royal work of upbuilding a town. "My town, my people, I leave to you the greatest gift I have to offer. I give you my boy, Jap. He is worthy. Hold up his hands, in memory of "ELLIS HINTON." As Harlow folded the paper, with hands that trembled, he was not conscious of the fact that hot tears were streaming down his cheeks. There was an instant of tense silence. Then Tom Granger walked over to the boy who lay, face downward across the table, arms outspread in abandon of grief. He took one limp hand in his, and a voiceless message went from heart to heart. Jap aroused himself. One by one the men of Bloomtown filed by. No word was spoken, but each man pledged himself to Ellis Hinton as he took the hand of Ellis's boy in a firm clasp. When the others had gone, Wat Harlow remained.