"Waal, my nevvy's got a good slab of Varmont marble, which he ordered for his fust wife; but the old folks did n't like it, and it's in his barn on the heater-piece. 'T ain't engraved, nor nothin'. If it should _suit_ the Mavericks, I dare say they could git it tol'able low." LXVI. Reuben is still floating between death and life. There is doubt whether the master of the long course or of the short course will win. However that may be, his consciousness has returned; and it has been with a great glow of gratitude that the poor Doctor has welcomed that look of recognition in his eye,--the eye of Rachel! He is calm,--he knows all. That calmness which had flashed into his soul when last he saw the serene face of his fellow-voyager upon that mad sea is _his_ still. The poor father had been moved unwontedly by that unconsciousness which was blind to all his efforts at spiritual consolation; but he is not less moved when he sees reason stirring again,--a light of eager inquiry in those eyes fearfully sunken, but from their cavernous depths seeing farther and more keenly than ever. "Adele's mother,--was she lost?" He whispers it to the Doctor; and Miss Eliza, who is sewing yonder, is quickened into eager listening. "Lost! my son, lost! Lost, I apprehend, in the other world as well as this, I fear the true light never dawned upon her." A faint smile--as of one who sees things others do not see--broke over the face of Reuben. "'T is a broad light, father; it reaches beyond our blind reckoning." There was a trustfulness in his manner that delighted the Doctor. "And you see it, my son?--Repentance, Justification by Faith, Adoption, Sanctification, Election?" "Those words are a weariness to me, father; they suggest methods, dogmas, perplexities. Christian hope, pure and simple, I love better." The Doctor is disturbed; he cannot rightly understand how one who seems inspired by so calm a trust--the son of his own loins too--should find the authoritative declarations of the divines a weariness. Is it not some subtle disguise of Satan, by which his poor boy is being cheated into repose? Of course the letter of Adele, which had been so long upon its way, Miss Eliza had handed to Reuben after such time as her caution suggested, and she had explained to him its long delay. Reading is no easy matter for him; but he races through those delicately penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her, but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn fringe upon the coverlet. It seems a relief to him to make the rent wider and wider. A little glimpse of the world has come back to him, which disturbs the repose with which but now he would have quitted it forever.