the _Fanny_ and pleaded with the men while the tears ran down his
face; but they would not yield, and he had to leave Margaret
behind. Oh, what a parting it was!"

There was heartbreak in the Story Girl's voice and tears came
into our eyes. There, in the green bower of Uncle Stephen's
Walk, we cried over the pathos of a parting whose anguish had
been stilled for many years.

"When it was all over, Margaret's father and mother forgave her,
and she went back home to wait--to WAIT. Oh, it is so dreadful
just to WAIT, and do nothing else. Margaret waited for nearly a
year. How long it must have seemed to her! And at last there
came a letter--but not from Alan. Alan was DEAD. He had died in
California and had been buried there. While Margaret had been
thinking of him and longing for him and praying for him he had
been lying in his lonely, faraway grave."

Cecily sprang up, shaking with sobs.

"Oh, don't--don't go on," she implored. "I CAN'T bear any more."

"There is no more," said the Story Girl. "That was the end of
it--the end of everything for Margaret. It didn't kill HER, but
her heart died."

"I just wish I'd hold of those fellows who wouldn't let the
Captain take his wife," said Peter savagely.

"Well, it was awful said," said Felicity, wiping her eyes. "But