On one side the bank towered up into a high, steep cliff, straight as a wall. It was completely covered with ferns; delicate, feathery maiden-hair ferns, as luxuriantly green as in mid-summer. In this sheltered spot they were still left untouched by the frost, although it was now December. Everywhere else vegetation was dry and sere, but the green freshness of this bank was accounted for by a number of tiny water-falls splashing down from unseen springs above, and sending a light spray in every direction, as fine as mist. "I'm coming straight back here in the morning," she said to herself, "and dig up a lot of these ferns before the frost gets them. I can't think of anything lovelier to send to Gay for a Christmas greeting than a clump of them growing in a box--a rustic box covered with bark and dainty lichens. One would be nice for Mrs. Rochester, too. She's just the kind that would appreciate such a gift. Well, that solves two of my hardest problems of what to give." That trip up the creek in _The Swan_ was a voyage of discovery in more ways than one, for Mary came upon the fact that she had grown older in the last quarter of an hour, quite as suddenly and unexpectedly as she had come upon the fern-bank. That cry of Jack's, "Heavens! If I could only end it all!" had shocked her into a deeper understanding of pain, and human limits of endurance. She had always prided herself on her ability to imagine herself in other people's places, and until now had believed that she fully understood and appreciated the depths of Jack's suffering. Now she saw that she had not even begun to fathom it. His bravery had deceived her. All the while that she had been thinking that he was growing accustomed to his lot and that time was making it easier for him to bear, a fire of rebellion was smouldering fiercely within him, making each day one of new torture. [Illustration: MARY WARE in TEXAS "She sent the boat down stream with long swift strokes."] Because she could plaster up her own small hurts with platitudes and proverbs, and ease her disappointments by counting her blessings "as one would count the beads upon a rosary" she had vainly imagined that all this would be balm for him. How many times she had offered him such comfort, feeling with childish complacency that she was helping to ease his pain. She understood now. A sugarplum may help one to forget a bee-sting, but a death-thrust is another matter.