He pressed the soft lock to his lips. "Yes," he murmured; "this is the
dear hair that I have kissed so often when her head lay upon my
shoulder. But it always had a rippling wave in it then, and now it seems
smooth and straight."

"It changes in illness," said the landlady. "If you'd like to see where
they have laid her, Mr. Talboys, my little boy shall show you the way to
the churchyard."

So George Talboys and his faithful friend walked to the quiet spot,
where, beneath a mound of earth, to which the patches of fresh turf
hardly adhered, lay that wife of whose welcoming smile George had
dreamed so often in the far antipodes.

Robert left the young man by the side of this newly-made grave, and
returning in about a quarter of an hour, found that he had not once
stirred.

He looked up presently, and said that if there was a stone-mason's
anywhere near he should like to give an order.

They very easily found the stonemason, and sitting down amidst the
fragmentary litter of the man's yard, George Talboys wrote in pencil
this brief inscription for the headstone of his dead wife's grave:

Sacred to the Memory of
HELEN,
THE BELOVED WIFE OF GEORGE TALBOYS,
"Who departed this life
August 24th, 18--, aged 22,