"Farewell, Derry. I kiss you, in a waking dream. No matter what the world has in store for you--though some other fair woman may quicken into life because of you--though men may honor your name and exalt you to the high places--you will never forget the girl you once held dear. As a souvenir, I send you all that is left of the bunch of white heather which formed my wedding bouquet. Did you see it that day when you hid on the ledge, and watched the triumphal start of a journey which has led me into such strange places and is now to end so soon? We never spoke of it when we passed the long, sunny hours by the lake--dear Heaven! our lake! Would that its bright waters had closed over my head then; for I was so happy, and so much in love with you and the world! But I knew what happened on that June day in the Gulch, for I could read your soul mirrored in your eyes; so now I give you one final memento, and hug the belief that you will press it to your lips. My poor secret dies with me, perhaps. I don't imagine that the man whom I used to revere as a father will satisfy an unfathomable spite by denying my child the tending and luxury it will receive in Hugh Marten's care. I could write reams of a woman's sad longings, of explanations that would lead nowhere; but I dare not trust even you, else you would deem me mad. And I am not mad, only woebegone and fearful, for the night cometh, and I shudder at its silence and mystery. So, once more, and for the last time, farewell, my dear. I take you in my arms. I cling to you, even in death." The unhappy man wilted under that piteous leave-taking. He felt that he had descended into a tomb, and was listening to a voice speaking in dread tones. The thick curtains of despair closed over his soul, and he seemed to be falling into an abyss. He heard himself uttering a broken wail of protest; for it was borne in on him that Nancy's heart-rending message had riveted close against the fetters he thought to have left forever amid the dun recesses of the Andes. What remained in life for him? What could there be of happiness and content, with the dire conviction lodged immovably in heart and brain that Nancy, like his mother, had died because of his wrong-doing? He was caught in some furious and fatal maelstrom which, like that fabled whirlpool of the North Sea, was sweeping him, in ever-narrowing circles, to irresistible doom. The marvel is that his mind did not give way; but a merciful release was not to be vouchsafed in that manner, for the fantastic laughter of lunacy would have been kinder than the blackness of darkness which now enwrapped his being. In that hour of abasement his spirit capitulated. Nothing mattered. He was crushed and paralyzed. He could not pray, because it did not seem as though there was One who gave heed. The bright world had become a place of skulls, a charnel house, a prison whose iron walls were closing in on him eternally.