“Yes.  They will go back home by the steamer to-morrow, and you will hear more of them when you return to Cacouna.”

“And the boat?”

“No one knows anything of that.  In the darkness and confusion it must have floated away with the current.”

There was another question to ask, but she stopped, scarcely knowing how to ask it.  Mr. Strafford understood her silence.

“The man told me,” he said, “that the coffin was on deck, and that when the steamer struck them the boat capsized.  He himself clung to the side for a moment when it was upside down in the water, so that everything on board, which was not secured, must have gone to the bottom.”

So it was.  Standing beside the home of her married life, she had witnessed her husband’s burial.  After his stormy life he was not to rest in quiet consecrated ground; but to lie where the current of his native river washed over him continually and kept him in perpetual oblivion.  It was better so.  No angry feelings had followed him to his death; but having been freely forgiven, it was well that he should leave no memorial behind him—­not even a grave—­but pass away and be forgotten.  When all was over, Mrs. Costello felt this.  For Lucia’s sake, it was well—­let the dead go now, and make way for the living.

  END OF VOL.  II.

  PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,
  LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.