“You have just come back to Granite all tired from your work. Then you saw my letter and opened it and—I’m afraid you’re on your way to my house before you’ve gotten this far.
“Oh, dear! This is the last of my little batch of Adirondack love letters. And I believe you’re rushing off to see me instead of reading it. And it isn’t a love letter after all. For it’s going to be only a note. I’ve all my packing to do and the ‘white-horse chariot’ comes for our trunks at six. It has been a beautiful vacation. Two weeks of it was heaven. And the memory of that last golden day of ours makes something queer come into my throat.
“But I’m oh so glad,—so glad—we are coming away. Every minute brings me nearer to Granite. You won’t be there when I arrive; but I’ll be where you have lived. And I’ll be waiting for you every minute till you come back. Just thinking about you and loving you, heart of my heart.
“I’m glad, too, that we are leaving the Antlers before everyone else does. It is sad, somehow, to watch the boat-loads go off into the dark and to be part of the dwindling group that is left. It is pleasantest to go away from a place,—yes, and from the world, too, I should think,—while everything is at its height; before friends thin out and the jolly crowd falls away and the happy, happy times begin to end. To leave everything in the flood-tide of the fun and to remember it as it was at its best; to be remembered as a little part of the happiness of it all. Not as one of the few last ones left behind.
“What a silly way to write! This isn’t a love letter at all. I told you it wasn’t. But I had a horrid dream last night and it has given me the shivers all day. I think some of its hagorousness has crept into my pen. No, I won’t write it. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. And then you can put your darling strong arms around me and laugh at me for letting myself get frightened by a silly dream. I wish this was a love letter. I never wrote one till this past week. So I don’t know how to say what I want to; to say all the wonderful things that are in my heart. But I love you, my own. And the whole world centres just around you. It always has. But now that you know it does, I feel so happy it frightens me. We’re going to be together forever and ever and ever—and ever,—and then some more. Aren’t we? Say so!
“Say so, beloved, and hold me very tight in your arms, very near to your heart when you say it. For to-day I’m foolish enough to want to be comforted a little bit. I wish I hadn’t had that dream. It was all nonsense, wasn’t it? Dreams never come true. So I won’t worry one minute longer. Only,—I wish I was with you, my strong, splendid old sweetheart. The only dream that can possibly come to pass is the glorious one we dreamed that night up on the mountain with the sea of mist all around us and God’s stars overhead. And we will never wake from it.
“The gentle, friendly northland summer is over now and the frost lies thick nearly every morning. It is time to go.
“Oh, my darling, I am coming home to you. Home! We must never be away from each other again. Not for a single day;—so long as we live.”
CHAPTER XXIII
“THE STRONG ARM OF CHRIST”
The sky was gray with morning as Conover stumbled into a sitting room of the little Magdeburg Hotel. Two men turned toward him. One of them, his arm in a sling—a great plaster patch on his forehead and dried blood caking his face,—hurried forward. Caleb looked twice before he recognized Jack Hawarden.