Had her wish been fulfilled? and had he left memory behind in the Valley of the Shadow, where he had left so much of the old Paul? She could scarcely tell, for he never spoke of that one summer, but lived his life as if it had not been. * * * * * But the light was lingering still on that steep slope, whence the purple cloud of Iona could be seen lying like an amethyst on the golden shield of the sea--for the sky was hung with blood-red pennants as if the hosts of heaven were going forth to war. And Tom Kennedy looked out over sea and sky from the gravestone which told that Marjory Carmichael died in attempting to save the life of Paul Macleod. There was a bunch of red rowans on the green grass. He brings one every year when, his brief holiday over, he climbs over the hill--as he did on the last day he saw her--on his way back to the work-a-day world, and that hand-to-hand fight with Death in others which will cease with his own. His eyes are troubled, for it comes back to him every year as he sits there that he might have saved her--if he had known. Known what? A smile comes to his face as he takes out an old letter and reads the last words she ever wrote to him, "Yet I stretch out my hands to you and say, again and again, Friendship is a bigger thing than Love!" The mists are rising even there as he turns to breast the hill, the cloud wreaths sweep solemnly in from the sea in stately curves, and as he pauses on the summit for a last look downwards, lo! there is nothing at all in earth, or sea, or sky, save himself and a grey, encircling mist. Love and Friendship, Life and Death, Sunshine and Shade! Where are they? THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Rowans, by Flora Annie Steel