Because she had always insisted upon it with the childish pertinacity of the simple-souled, the Burton family went back with her to the ragged slopes of the White Mountains.  They saw again, for the first time since they had turned away from their padlocked door, the hills and rocks and rutted roads that had once been their own country.

Jefferson Edwardes went with them, and when the funeral was ended and the little cortege left the churchyard, he and Mary Burton remained a while among the graves.  Most of the trees were stark and naked, but to one or two still clung shreds of departed autumn brilliancy.  A maple still boasted a few scarlet tatters of the banner with which it had done honor to the Frost King.  By the decaying wall of the little church a scrub oak rattled its tenacious leafage of russet brown.

About the two tilted and careened the neglected tombstones of those who slept humbly but restfully here.  The gaunt hills, too, tilted and careened in heaped-up barriers of dilapidation to the distance where the autumn veiled them in a smoky purple.  But above them was the glow of crimson and rose-ash, where the sunset burned.

Mary’s beautiful eyes were bright with tears and as she stood there slim and straight, the man came close and his arm slipped about her.  For a moment she seemed unconscious of his presence, then she turned and her eyes looked steadfastly into his, and, as they looked, they smiled through their mistiness.

“Thank God,” she said in a low voice into which a tremor stole; “thank God, you came to me and woke me up—­in time.”

After a little she spoke again hastily as though in fright.

“Dearest,” she declared tensely, “as I stood here today a fear came over me:  a fear and a premonition.  It seemed to me that every hill and every tree was accusing us.  Silent voices were calling out, ’Why did you go away?’” She broke off, and then, as though from the strength of his embrace, she drew reassurance, she went on:  “Suppose it was all a ghastly mistake?  Suppose Hamilton’s overvaulting ambition with all its vast egotism should totter and fall?  What would become of us in that world down there?  I have, since we left here, seen only one look of serene and utterly calm peace on any face in our family.  It was her face—­” The girl nodded toward the grave and shivered.

The man drew her closer.

“Loved faces in death always wear a peace that life does not know,” he told her.  Then whimsically he smiled as he voiced a fantastic suggestion: 

“Maybe, dearest, there’s some land beyond the stars where all the mistakes we make here can be remedied ... where we can take up our marred lives and live them afresh, as we have dreamed them.  Perhaps in that other world we can go back to the turning of the road where we lost our ways ... and choose the other path.”

* * * * *