Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/312

 And to the Coogans come sometimes letters from a far-western farm to say that things are well and that prosperity has come to one who signs himself—facetiously it always seems to Mamie who reads the letters to her husband—as Pale Face Harry.

And so the years have passed, and it is summer time again. The fields are green; the trees in leaf; the flowers in bloom. And there are visitors who have come again to the scenes of yesterday—a man and woman—and between them a sturdy little lad of eight. They stop at the end of the wagon track and look out across the lawn.

It is still and peaceful, tranquil—and to them comes the soft, low murmur of the surf. Slowly they walk across the lawn, and pass beneath the splendid maples—and pause again.

The cottage is like some poet's fancy, hidden shyly in its creepers and its vines; and seems to speak and breathe in its simple beauty of the gentle soul who once had lived there—and loved his fellow-men. It is as it always was, open, free for all to pass within who wish to enter; for loving hands have cared for it, and grateful purses, opened to its needs, have kept it as—a Shrine.

But they do not enter now, for Madison points to where the sunlight, as it glints through the trees at the far end of the cottage, falls on a slender shaft of marble.

"Let us go there, Helena," he said softly.

And so they walked that way, past the trellises