THE MAJOR'S STORY. 285 



"Restore her? No. A glance at her face showed 

 how vain all such hope was. Never was human face so 

 angelic. She was already one of the saintly — one of the 

 immortals — and the beauty and glory of her new life had 

 left some faint likeness of itself on her dead form and 

 face. 



" I said I had never grown a day older since that time. 

 You know now why. I have never ceased to think of 

 her as on that day. I have never lost the blessing of 

 those eyes as they looked on me in the forest on the 

 mountain road. I have never left her, never grown away 

 from her. If, in the resurrection, we are to resume the 

 bodies most exactly fitted to represent our whole lives ; 

 if, as I have sometimes thought, we shall rise in the forms 

 we wore when some great event stamped our souls for- 

 ever, then I am certain that I shall awake in form and 

 feature as I was that day, and no memorial will remain 

 of an hour of my life after her burial. 



"We buried her in the old vault close by the house, 

 among the oaks. Beautiful to the very last. 



" My voice is broken. I can not talk any more. You 

 have the story. That is the whole of it. God bless you, 

 my boy. You have listened — patiently — to — my — talk. 



"Good-night. Go to bed. I'll stay here in this chair 

 awhile. I don't — exactly — feel — like — sleeping — just 

 yet." 



I left him sitting there; his head bowed on his breast, 

 his eyes closed, his breathing heavy. My own eyes were 

 misty. 



In the hall I found John, sitting bolt upright in a large 

 chair. 



"Why, John, I thought the Major sent you to bed long 

 ago?" ' 



