Epilogue.
On Pine Tree mountain the old house still stands, its windows hidden beneath vines. Back and forth by the barns Tony slowly moves. By the gate an old dog lies waiting. On the porch a frail cripple sits in the twilight and looks down the road. But the one they wait for will never come. Across the years of busy action and world-wide service he treads the path that leads to "palms of victory, crowns of glory." In the joy of service he is finding the peace which the world cannot give nor take away. In self-forgetfulness he is growing daily into His likeness, until he shall at last awake in His image, satisfied.
THE TAKING IN OF MARTHA MATILDA.
BY BELLE KELLOGG TOWNE.
She stood at the end of the high bridge and looked over it to where her father was making his way along the river-bank by a path leading to the smelter. Then she glanced up another path branching at her feet from the road crossing the bridge and which climbed the mountain until it reached a little adobe cottage, then stopped. She seemed undecided, but the sweet tones of a church bell striking quickly on the clear April air caused her to turn her face in the direction from whence the sound came.
It was Martha Matilda, "Graham's girl," who stood thus, with the wind from the snow-caps blowing down fresh upon her, tossing to and fro the slim feather in her worn hat, and making its way under the lapels of her unbuttoned jacket—Martha Matilda Graham, aged ten, with a wistful face that might have been sweet and dimpled had not care and loneliness robbed it of its rightful possessions. Further back there had been a mother who called the child "Mattie." But now there was only "father," and with him it was straight "Martha Matilda," spoken a little brusquely, but never unkindly. Oh, yes, up in the cottage, certain days, was Jerusha, who did the heavy work and then went home nights; with Jerusha it was plain "Mat." Then there was Miss Mary down at the school which Martha Matilda had attended at the time when loving mother-fingers "fixed her up like other girls," and Miss Mary, when speaking to the child "running wild upon the mountain side," always said "dear." But Martha Matilda had dropped out of the day-school and out of the Sunday-school. Somehow she had grown tired of trying to keep shoe-strings from breaking, and aprons from being torn, and if she was just home with Towser, such things did not matter; as to her going to school, her father did not seem to care. "Guess there's no hurry 'bout filling so small a head," he would sometimes say when Jerusha pleaded for school with Martha's eyes assenting.
So now, Martha Matilda stood listening to the chiming of the Easter bells and seemed undecided as to her next move.