Day by day she grew frail and more frail. Her eyes were pools for the coming shadows of death. Strange had been their love: strange the coming of it: stranger still was their joy in the hour of death. For this thing upbore her, that was to go, and him, that was to stay: JOY. Not vainly had they lived in dream. Sweet now was the waning of the dream into long sleep. Sweet is sleep that will never stir to any waking: sweeter that sleep which is but a balm of rest. For they knew this: that they would awake in the fulness of time. When, for the first time, the doom-word passed her lips, Alan shuddered slightly, but he did not quail. "I am dying, dear heart!" "Sorcha, this thing has been near to us many days. It is not for long." "And thou wilt look to thine own dark hour with joy?" "Even so." "And our legacy to this our child ... shall be ... shall be...." "It shall be Joy. He shall be, among men, Ivor the Joy-bringer." No more was said between them, then, nor later. It was in the afternoon of the day following this that Sorcha died. She was fain to breathe her last breath on the mountain-side. Tenderly, to the green hillock by the homestead, Alan had carried her. Soft was the west wind upon her wandering hands; warm the golden light out of the shining palaces of cloud whence that wind came. He was stooping, with his arm upholding her, and whispering low, when, suddenly, she lifted the little Ivor toward him. Quietly she lay back against the slope of the green grass. She was dead. Alan quivered. All the tears of his life rose up in a flood, and drowned his heart. He could not see the child in his arms; but he did not sway nor fall. Sorcha strengthened him. Then silently the wave of grief, of a grief that might not be spoken, ebbed. Out of the sea of bitterness his soul rose, a rock with the sun shining upon it. Slowly he raised the child above his head, till the wind was all about it, and the flooding glory of light out of the west. A look of serene peace came into his face: within him the breath of an immortal joy transcended the poor frailty of the stricken spirit. When the words that were on his lips were uttered, they were proud and strong as the fires of the sun against the dawn: "_Behold, O God, this is Ivor, the son of Sorcha, that I boon unto Thee, to be, for all the days Thou shalt give him, Thy servant of Joy among men._" * * * * * There was peace that night upon Iolair. But toward dawn--the morrow of that new, strange life wherein Alan and the child, with Oona mayhap, were to go forth toward those distant isles where, as Sorcha had seen in a vision, Ivor's ministry of joy was to be--a great wind arose. The hills heard, and the moan of them went up before it. The mountains awoke, and were filled with a sound of rejoicing. Through the darkness that lightened momently it came down the glens and the dim braes of bracken. Many waters felt the breath of it, and leaped.