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374 When he reached the mound he stood looking down. Since the night he had lain by it looking up at the sky and had made his resolve, the grass had grown longer and thicker and turned from green to brown.

He spoke aloud, just as he had done before.

"It is done," he said. "Your thought was what you dreamed it would be. I have kept my word."

He stopped as if for an answer. But it was very still—so still that the silence was like a Presence. And the mound at his feet lay golden brown in the sunlight, even its long grass unstirred.

They left Broxton the next day and in a week he set sail. As the ship moved away he stood leaning upon the taffrail watching a figure on the shore. It was a girl in a long cloak of gray almost the color of the mist in which she stood—a slender motionless figure—the dark young face turned seaward.

He watched her until he could see her face no longer, but still she had not stirred.

"When I return," he said, scarcely conscious that he spoke, "when I return—it will be to you."

Then the grayness closed about her and she faded slowly from his sight.