There were tears in Katy’s eyes as she read this letter from Bell, and with a mental prayer of thanksgiving that she had been of any use in guiding even one to the Shepherd’s fold, she took next the letter whose superscription made her tremble for a moment and turn faint, it brought back so vividly to her mind the daisy-covered grave in Alnwick, whose headstone bore Genevra Lambert’s name.  Marian, who was now at Annapolis, caring for the returned prisoners, did not write often, and her letters were prized the more by Katy, who read with a heating heart the kind congratulations upon her recent marriage, sent by Marian Hazelton.

“I knew how it would end, even when you were in Georgetown,” she wrote, “and I am glad that it is so, praying daily that you may be as happy with Dr. Grant as to remember the sad past only as some dream from which you have awakened.  I thank you for your invitation to visit Linwood, and when my work is over I may come for a few weeks and rest in your bird’s nest of a home.  Thank God the war is ended; but my boys need me yet, and until the last crutch has left the hospital, and the last worn figure gone, I shall stay where duty lies.  What my life will henceforth be I do not know, but I have sometimes thought that with the ample funds you so generously bestowed upon me, I shall open a school for orphan children, taking charge myself, and so doing some good.  Will you be the lady patroness, and occasionally enliven us with the light of your countenance?  I have left the hospital but once since you were here, and then I went to Wilford’s grave.  Forgive me, Katy, if I did wrong in wishing to kneel once upon the sod which covered him.  I prayed for you while there, remembering only that you had been his wife.  In a little box where no eyes but mine ever look, there is a bunch of flowers plucked from Wilford’s grave.  They are faded now and withered, but something of their sweet perfume lingers still; and I prize them as my greatest treasure, for, except the lock of raven hair severed from his head, they are all that is remaining to me of the past, which now seems so far away.  It is time to make my nightly round of visits, so I must bid you good-by.  The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you, and be with you forever.

“MARIAN HAZELTON.”

For a long time Katy held this letter in her hand, wondering if the sorrowful woman whose life was once so strangely blended with that of Marian Hazelton and the pale occupant of that grave at Greenwood, whence the flowers came, could be the Katy Grant who sat by the evening fire at Linwood, with no shadow on her brow, and only the sunshine of perfect happiness resting on her heart.  “Truly, He doeth all things well to those who wait upon Him,” she thought, as she laid down Marian’s letter and took up the third and last, Helen’s letter, dated at Fortress Monroe, whither with Mark Ray she had gone just after Bell Cameron’s bridal.