late in the evening before he came home. He still had the dress suit
on, but the bouquet was gone. It needed no one tell us on what little
mound of earth it had been left. I think I have said that the Major
was not easy to be intimate with, and to that fact I ascribe none of
us trying to console his grief by reference to his little love. He
resumed his every day suit--he wore his full dress suit for several
days, I think, as a sort of silent expression of mourning--and resumed
his old seat in the corner of the veranda, where he and the little one
had such gay larks and which was their headquarters when they came
from walk. He was the same gentle, sweet old man, except if anything
a shade gentler to all and especially to children. When I came away
he walked to the depot with me, and as we walked, told me he expected
always to live where--well, where he lived now. That was the nearest
he ever came to speaking of what filled his heart. I can see him now,
as the cars started, waving his hand and his blue eyes lighted up.

And now to the letter. It is just a few days since I got it. In writing
to one of my hotel acquaintances I had sent my regards to the old
Major, and asked if he had kept his promise to live there always. The
answer shocked me. He had not kept his promise, the writer said, but
he had gone to live in a another and Better Country. His health of
late had not been strong, and a few weeks ago it had become clear that
he was fast going. His last walk was out to the resting place of his
little love. As he grew worse and weaker he asked that the rector be
sent for. When he came, the Major told him that he had long ago placed
his hopes on the Heavenly Father and tried to live as a child of His,
and--with his old time gentle hesitation--he added, "as a poor unworthy
child of His." But it was not for that he had sent for him, it was
this, and here the Major took from under his pillow a letter addressed
to baby's parents, which he asked the rector to deliver. It had been