Chapter 9 FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.

Bergan now mended rapidly; a mind and heart at ease are excellent medicines. In a few days it was pronounced safe to remove him to Oakstead. Here he was informed of the strange disappearance of Maumer Rue.

"Her grandson, Brick, was at the cabin two or three times," said Mr. Bergan, "when you were too ill to allow his admittance. He is here now, and very anxious to see you. May he come in?"

Brick, being admitted, burst into tears. He was glad to see his beloved master, but his heart and mind were heavily burdened. When he had last seen his grandmother, she had told him that she was going on a long journey, and should not return; but she had charged him solemnly to say nothing of this communication to anybody but Bergan; who, she averred, would return in good time. Then he was to bid him, in her name, to "seek and find;" she had added, that he would know where to look.

Bergan started up with a face of alarm. "I must go at once," he ex claimed; "I am afraid it is already too late!"

"But you are not strong enough," remonstrated Mr. Bergan. "Tell us where to look, we will go in your stead."

"I would gladly do so, if I knew how," answered Bergan, "but I am not certain that I can find the place myself; I never saw it but once, and then it was in the night. At the worst, however, we can cut a way into it. Come, uncle; come, Hubert, you will both be needed; and we ought to have a doctor, too. The secret—for there is one—has long been kept, but it must needs out now; and it is as well that it should, the day of such things is over."

The carriage was ordered, and having set down the three gentlemen at the Hall, went after Doctor Gerrish.

Bergan, meanwhile, sought for the hidden spring. It required some time and thought before he found and pressed it. The secret chamber being then exposed to view, Rue was discovered sitting at the massive secretary, in a large arm-chair, with her head bowed on her folded hands. She was dead; Doctor Gerrish affirmed that she had been so for some days. Ample provision of food and water was near; she had died a perfectly natural and peaceful death, from the infirmities of old age. It was apparent that she had deliberately chosen this spot for her death-chamber. But why? That was a mystery.

It was soon solved. As they gently raised the body to lay it on the same bed where her master, and so many of his race had slept their last sleep before her, a folded paper dropped from her clasped hands, and fell at Bergan's feet. He picked it up, glanced at it, and laid it on the desk without a word. There was that in his face, however, which made Hubert also look at it; and straightway he held it up to view with the triumphant exclamation:

"The lost will, gentlemen, the lost will! Bergan, let me be the first to congratulate you."

It was easy to understand now, that, feeling her last hour at hand, and knowing that no will left anywhere in the Hall, or in her own cabin, would be likely to escape Doctor Remy's destructive touch, she had taken this method of fulfilling her master's last command:

"See that Harry has Bergan Hall. Give this will into his own hands, and no one's else. I trust none of them but you."

Well might he trust her! Almost a century of loyal service had she given to him and his house, ready at any time, if need be, to lay down her life for their sake. Well might Bergan give her tender, honorable burial, and cause to be graven deep on her tombstone:

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.

*****

Hubert Arling wooed and won Coralie Youle. His strong likeness to his brother first found him favor in her eyes; by and by, she would have been amazed to be told that she had ever cared for him, except on his own sufficient account.

Diva Thane and Astra Lyte went to Italy, for some years, to give Astra's genius fit food and training. The direction of its future labors was settled. She would spend her life and strength in the service of Christian art, trying to lose all thought of self in that of consecration, and counting her work successful, though it never left her studio, nor brought her either money or fame, if only it lifted the minds of those who contemplated it to a point above itself, to a loftier standard of living, a clearer conception of the beauty of holiness, a more earnest aspiration after the glory that "shall be." On her return, she brought with her a Saint Christopher that satisfied even Carice. The giant was kneeling before the Wondrous Child, who had at once so burdened him, and so strengthened him to bear; his face was full of awe and love; he recognized his Lord; he had found the King who alone was worthy of his service, and whom alone he was content to serve.

As for Diva, there are sisters of charity, who wear no distinctive garments, save patience and faith. A gentleman once said to Bergan, admiring her stately beauty, "She should be a queen." "She is a queen," was the quick reply, "a queen according to the Gospel pattern, 'Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.'"

In due time, Bergan restored the old Hall, although not without reducing somewhat of its ostentatious size by cutting down the long wings, and with no extravagant outlay. He had learned that the inevitable, and probably healthful, tendency of property in this country, is to division. The larger and costlier the dwelling, beyond a certain extent, the more sure it is to prove too heavy a burden for some inheritor, and the less likely to go down in a direct line. The man who would have his name live, must link it with some institution more imperishable than a family home. First of all, therefore, Bergan took care to embody in carven stone and jewelled glass that fair vision which he had seen on his first visit to the Berganton church. This being done, we may be sure that his more personal dreams of happiness and honor came true, also.

A fair and gracious wife and mother was Carice! She never lost the flower-like grace and purity of her girlhood, nor her rare power of seeing straight to the central truth of things. "It is said that I have lost a year of my life," he once remarked; "it is the year that I count most truly saved."

Richard Causton, having learned, through his forced abstinence during his long, lonely watch over Bergan, that existence was possible without alcoholic stimulant, and being helped by Bergan's steady friendship and countenance, made a determined effort at reformation, and succeeded, though not without a sore struggle, and many lapses. The last of his backslidings was made memorable by the following incident.

Going too near the edge of the excavation aforementioned, he slipped and fell over, displacing some of the sand at the foot of the bank by his weight, which had also been much washed by a recent heavy rain. Struggling to his feet, he was horrified to see a skeleton hand pointing at him from the base of the precipice. He fled, without stopping to look behind him; but his story set other and acuter minds to work, as well as, a little later, two or three careful spades; and the body of Edmund Roath was exhumed, and the mystery of his disappearance was explained. The sand had suddenly caved in, under his weight, and buried him, as he fell. His flight had been short, in one sense; far, very far, in another. Had he witnessed such a termination to another's career, he would, doubtless, have termed it Chance, or Fate; but those who stood around his dead, shrunken body, with its sunken eyes and its uplifted hands, looked awe-stricken in each other's faces, and solemnly whispered, "Providence." Nevertheless, some simple souls murmured that he had escaped just punishment. "Do you think so?" asked Mr. Islay. "So would not he who said 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.' Be thankful, rather, that justice to the guilty is so tempered with mercy to the innocent. An earthly scaffold would not have added one straw's weight to the despair of that miserable soul, when he stood on the brink of death, and knew that his failure was complete for time and eternity, but it would have been a heavy burden to certain gentle hearts. It is they who have escaped, not he. Where the cords of his sins do not hold a man to a godly sorrow, they must needs hold him to a righteous retribution."

Richard Causton's old age had something of the mellow sweetness of a late, frost-bitten apple, such as is occasionally plucked from the tree in midwinter. He lived to teach Bergan's eldest son many of his favorite proverbs, in their many tongues, but he constantly impressed upon him that the truest, most significant, most solemn of them all was one from Holy Writ:

"HE SHALL BE HOLDEN WITH THE CORDS OF HIS SINS."



THE END.