“So, Watch-dog:--They have taken me and left you, and there be miles between. Wherefore I feel very safe and very sad. It is all birds and blossoms and trees and sunshine and bright days and sorrow here. I came away in such a tumult of hurry I left many things behind. Most of them I can do without, but I mislaid my love, and that grows to be a sore distress. Here where I should need it I'm without it; there, where mayhap it lies unregarded and uncared for, it can give me no good but only pain. You may find it--my poor love!--since it should be something close to you. It may be lying at your feet while you read this. Should you come across it, even though you be in the art and press of president making, don't forget to lift it up and save it and keep it warm upon your heart for sake of little Peg. But I must cure me of this abject strain; I too much beg where I should give commands. For are you not my slave? Look if the small white mark of vassalage be not upon your hand! Do you find it? Yes? Read it, then, and re-read it with your heart! Do you know the promise it would tell you? By the sign of that white mark my tooth made, it is given that now or then, or here or there, or in this life or in that, your Peg will yet lay hands of love upon her slave.” That was the last letter as it was the first--the last word from my lost and vanished Peg. I have that letter by me as I write; it is yellow and worn and stained and blistered as though with tears. That was my last word from her, I say. And now when the winter of my days lies thick and white and cold upon me, and those whom I loved are gone, while those to come and go before me are strangers whose very names are strange, I wend often to Peg's grave. There where the great stone fits down above her, and resting myself upon that stone--there, by the door of death, I muse upon the past. I kiss the stone above Peg--cold it is, cold as my age-chilled lips! And I think on the time that was, with its hot lights to dazzle and blind and make drunk the heart with the red splendors of them; and on the time that will be--a shadow-land of unformed wonders! Then will my old eyes come to search among the wrinkles for that small white mark on my hand which Peg's loving leopard teeth ordained, and I feel again that snowstorm kiss, while my hope, for a prayer, recites Peg's bond to yet lay hands of love upon her slave. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Peggy O'Neal, by Alfred Henry Lewis