“It was to me that it was intrusted.”

“And you are afraid to trust me with it?”

“I am afraid to break the trust reposed in myself.”

Again the black roll of silent thunder gloomed on his brow; as once his sister’s eyes had been, his now were coruscant.

“Do you refuse to give it to me?” he demanded.

“I do,” I said, “now, and until Miss Lettie says, ‘Give.’”

“You’ve learned the contents, I presume,” he said, with untold sarcasm.  “Woman’s curiosity digs deeply, when once aroused.”

“You’ve been taught of woman in a sad school, I fear.  I’ll forgive the faults of your education, Mr. Axtell.  Have you any more remarks to me?  I’m waiting.”

“Do you know the contents of the letter that made Lettie so anxious?”

“You accused me before questioning formerly, or I should have given you truth.  I have no knowledge of what is in the letter.”

He had resumed his former position, leaning against the monument, where I had mine.  He changed it now, drawing nearer for an instant, then went to the side of the grave that he had asked me concerning, kneeled there, laid two hands above it, and said,—­

“Letty was right, Miss Anna.  God has made you well,—­made you after the similitude of her who sleeps underneath this sod.  Will you forgive my rudeness?”

And he looked down as I had done, ere he came, into the tangled, matted fibres, then out into the great all-where of air, as if some mysterious presence encompassed him.

Very lowly I said,—­

“Forgiveness is of God;” and I remembered the vision that came in my dream.  The little voice that steals into hearts crowded with emotions, and tells tiny nerves of wish which way to fly, went whispering through the niches of my mind, “Tell the dream.”

Mr. Axtell went back to his monumental resting-place.  I said,—­

“I have had a wonderful dream to-day;” and I began to tell the opening thereof.

The first sentence was not told when I stopped, suddenly.  I could not go on.  He asked me, “Why?” I only re-uttered what I felt, that I could not tell it.

“Oh!  I have had a dream,” he said,—­“one that for eighteen years has been hung above my days and woven into my nights,—­a great, hopeless woof of doom.  I have tried to broider it with gold, I have tried to hang silver-bells upon the drooping corners thereof.  I have tried to fold it about me and wear it, as other men wear sorrows, for the sun of heaven and the warmth of society to draw the wrinkled creases out.  I have striven to fold it up, and lay it by in the arbor-vitae chest of memory, with myrrh and camphor, but it will not be exorcised.  No, no! it hangs firm as granite, stiff as the axis of the sun, unapproachable as the aurora of the North.  Miss Percival, could you wear such a vestment in the march of life?”

“Your dream is too mystical; will you tell me what it has done for you?  As yet, I only know what you have not done with it.”