were usually for the purpose of visiting Mildred’s grave.  The sun shone warm that day from a blue sky as Dorian came slowly and reverently to the plot where lay all that was earthly of one whom he loved so well.  The new headstone gleamed in white marble and the young grass stood tender and green.  Against the stone lay a bunch of withered wild roses.  Someone had been there before him that day.  Whom could it be?  Her mother was not in the city, and who else would remember the visit of the angel-being who had returned to her eternal home?  A pang shot through his heart, and he was half tempted to turn without placing his own tribute on the grave, then immediately he knew the thought was foolish.  He took off the wrapping and placed his fresher flowers near the more withered ones.  Later that summer, he learned only incidently that it had been Carlia who had been before him that afternoon.

During those days, Carlia kept out of Dorian’s way as much as possible.  She even avoided walking to and from school with him.  He was so absentminded even with her that she in time came to resent it in her feelings.  She could not understand that a big, very-much-alive boy should have his mind so fixed on a dead girl that he should altogether forget there were living ones about, especially one, Carlia Duke.

One evening Dorian met Uncle Zed driving his cow home from the pasture, and the old man invited the younger man to walk along with him.  Dorian always found Uncle Zed’s company acceptable.

“Why haven’t you come to me with your trouble?” abruptly asked Uncle Zed.

Dorian started, then hung his head.

“We never have any unshared secrets, you know, and I may have been able to help you.”

“I couldn’t talk to anybody.”

“No; I suppose not.”

The cow was placed in the corral, and then Uncle Zed and Dorian sat down on a grassy bank.  The sun was painting just such a picture of the marshlands as Dorian knew so well.

“But I can talk to you” continued the old man as if there had been no break in his sentences.  “Death, I know, is a strange and terrible thing, for youth; when you get as old as I, I hope you will look on death as nothing more than a release from mortality, a moving from one sphere to another, a step along the eternal line of progress.  I suppose that it is just as necessary that we pass out of the world by death as that we enter it by birth; and I further suppose that the terror with which death is vested is for the purpose of helping us to cling to this earth-life until our mission here is completed.”

Dorian did not speak; his eyes were on the marshlands.

“Imagine, Dorian, this world, just as it is, with all its sin and misery and without any death.  What would happen?  We would all, I fear, become so self-centered, so hardened in selfishness that it would be difficult for the gentle power of love to reach us; but now there is hardly a family that has not one or more of its members on the other side.  And these absent loved ones are anchors to our souls, tied to us by the never-ending cords of love and affection.  You, yourself, my boy, never have had until now many interests other than those of this life; now your interests are broadened to another world, and that’s something worth while....  Now, come and see me often.”  They arose, each to go to his home.