Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/108

98 answer; he stood while the last gleams of youth faded from him, and he was old indeed, as the sun sets behind a hill, driving the warm purple shadows away, leaving it cold and bleak. He went at last to his brother's house, and there a kind young niece met him.

"You would like to see poor Mollie's grave," she said, as she brought him through the fields into the churchyard. "That is it. When I have a lover," she continued, as he sat with his head upon his hands, "I will not wait for him as she did for you, poor thing! Why did you not come to her?"

The old man beside the grave thought, but could not remember. After all, why had he not returned? Now the difficulties which had parted them did not seem difficulties at all. He bent over the grave, and the young girl in her pity went wandering away. But Henry was not grieving, as she imagined; he was wondering why he did not suffer more. After all, he felt almost glad the agony of parting was over. "We could have had only a few years together, I am so old," he thought. "And life or death can do no more for us; the agony of parting is past, we shall only meet for ever