home with your father, well and happy."

Then in his dream, which was also a memory, the old man saw how the
young husband kissed and comforted his wife.

"My dear," said Claude, "if it were not for you, what happiness could
I have in the world? Courage, my wife, courage and hope. I shall think
of you and Iris all day and all night until we meet again."

And so they parted and the ship sailed away.

The old man opened his eyes and looked about him. It was a dream.

"It was twenty years ago," he said, "and Iris was a baby in arms.
Twenty years ago, and he never saw his wife again. Never again!
Because she died," he added after a pause; "my Alice died."

He shed no tears, being so old that the time of tears was well-nigh
past--at seventy-five the eyes are drier than at forty, and one is no
longer surprised or disappointed, and seldom even angry, whatever
happens.

But he opened the letter in his hand and read it again mechanically.
It was written on thin foreign paper, and the creases of the folds had
become gaping rents. It was dated September, 1866, just eighteen years
back.

"When you read these lines," the letter said, "I shall be in the
silent land, whither Alice, my wife, has gone before me. It would be a
strange thing only to think upon this journey which lies before me,