A Golden Opportunity 333 



What had happened ? The L-road was silent 

 as an ancient tomb ! The surface system was 

 paralyzed ! There was never a gong, nor a metal 

 shoe striking a cobble ; it was awful ! Then 

 came a gasping whisper, then another and another. 

 That settled it ! There was some tremendous 

 fire down town and everything was tied up, and 

 somebody in my room, or the next, had been left 

 to die alone. I could hear his, or her, soul sliding 

 out between the set teeth, and not caring to have 

 even some stranger's soul get lost, I proceeded 

 to get up. 



At this instant came another sound. Evi- 

 dently the suffering soul had got away and was 

 now wishing itself safe back again, for there came 

 a slow, solemn, lost-forever sort of wailing — an 

 yEolian brand of dead march, in which every 

 string was busy and a fair breeze pledged by the 

 weather bureau. In it was every known note of 

 grief unmeasured, from the hopeless misery of a 

 child irrigating a broken doll, to the staider and 

 better sustained effort of Rachel mourning for 

 her children, with a dash of banshee at the bot- 

 tom of the cup of sorrow. Sweetly solemn, 

 wildly sad as it was, it was very welcome, for 

 those same old pines had whispered my cradle- 

 song in the tow-headed past. 



Some few moments later, as it seemed to me, 

 the venerable family horse took a stroll through 



