“I wanted my mother to know what God had permitted me to be to this man, his great anchor of clinging in all storms,—­how, in loving him, I had been permitted to save him.  Do you think it is good,” she asked,—­“my story?  It isn’t a story of what the world calls ‘happy love’; I don’t think I should find it happy even now.  I have come to a solemn bridge in the journey of Time.  I know it must be crossed,—­only how?  It is high; my head is dizzied by the very thought.  It has none of the ordinary protective railings; I must walk out alone, and—­I cannot see the other end; it is too far, too misty.  My mother’s face fills up all the way; it comes out to meet me, and I do not rightly hear what she says, for my ears are filled with the roar of the life-current that frets over rocks below.  I try to stay it while I listen; it only floods the way.  There is time given me; there is no immediate cause for action:  for this I am thankful.  Mr. McKey left me at the tower on the day you heard us there.  He is a surgeon in the naval service.  His ship sailed last week on a three years’ voyage.  I shall have time to think, to decide what I ought to do; perhaps the roar will cease, and I shall hear what my mother tries to say.

“I have one great thought of torment.  Abraham, what if he should die, too,—­die without knowing? that I could not bear”; and the face, still looking toward Zoar, lifted up itself from the little City of Refuge, and looked into the face of Anna Percival.  “Poor Abraham!” she said, “he has suffered, perhaps even more than I. He will hear you.  Will you tell him this for me?  Tell him all; and when you tell how Mary came to die, give him this,”—­and she handed to me the very package I had twice journeyed with,—­“it will prove to him the truth of what I say.”

I hesitated to take that which she proffered.

“You must not disappoint me,” she said.  “I have spent happy hours since you went away, in the belief that Providence sent you here to me in the greatness of my need.  I cannot tell Abraham; I could not bear the joy that will, that must come, when he lays down the burden of his crime,—­for, oh! it will be at the feet of Bernard McKey.  You will not refuse me this?” she pleaded.

Anna Percival, in the silence of that upper room where so much of life had come to her, sat at Miss Axtell’s side, and thought of the dream that came one Sunday morning to her, sleeping, and out of the memory of it came tolling down to her heart the words then spoken, and, taught by them, she answered Miss Axtell’s pleading by an “I will.”

“Good little comfort-giver!” Miss Lettie said; and she left the package, containing the precious jewel, in my hands.