"Yes. Your father told me all. I wondered why you did not come back, Allen, to relieve my anxiety. Of course you did not go to the Red Deeps?"
"No," said Allen sitting down, her hand within his own, "I never got so far, dearest. So your dream came true?"
"Yes. Truer than you think--truer than you can imagine," said Eva in a tone of awe. "Oh, Allen, I never believed in such things; but that such a strange experience should come to me,"--she covered her face and wept, shaken to the core of her soul; Allen soothed her gently, and she laid her head on his breast, glad to have such kind arms around her. "Yes, my father is dead," she went on, "and do you know, Allen, wicked girl that I am, I do not feel so filled with sorrow as I ought to be? In fact"--she hesitated, then burst out, "Allen, I am wicked, but I feel relieved----"
"Relieved, Eva?"
"Yes! had my father come home alive everything would have gone wrong. You and I would have been parted, and--and--oh, I can't say what would have happened. Yet he is my father after all, though he treated my mother so badly, and I knew so little about him. I wish--oh, I wish that I could feel sorry, but I don't--I don't."
"Hush, hush! dearest," said Allen softly, "you knew little of your father, and it's natural under the circumstances you should not feel the loss very keenly. He was almost a stranger to you, and----"
While Allen was thus consoling her, the door opened abruptly and Hill entered rather excited. "Eva," he said quickly, "you never told me that your father's wooden hand had been removed."
"It has not been," said Eva; "it was on when we laid out his body."
"It's gone now, then," said Hill quietly, and looking very pale; "gone."