In this simple manner, and with these few words was his bitter trouble brought to a close.
Well, that is all the yarn concerning Tom Granger that need be told. The troubles that had followed him in the year and a half past had been bitter indeed, but they had all gone by now. I am not going to tell you how he married, and how he lived happily, and all that sort of matter. Surely, such a home as I see around me, and such a crowd of loving faces as gather about me at times, children, grand-children, and three great-grand-children, bespeak a life not all unhappy of its kind.
Even yet, beside me is that one whose face, always sweet, now shines with a light that comes not of this life, but of the life beyond. I do thank the Giver of all good things that He has permitted us to walk the path of life hand-in-hand together for this long time. A day or two now, and one of us may go—I care not which it be, for the other will not be long in tarrying.
What matters then all these troubles of which I have been telling you! Such troubles, bitter and keen at the time, are but as a breath on the glass of life, that fade away, and are gone long before that glass itself is shivered.
So, as I say, these sorrows and griefs that were once so bitter to me, stir me not at this day, saving now and then, while, as I sat writing these lines, a chord of memory did ring occasionally to the touch. Yes; all is gone by—happiness and grief, joy and suffering, and I am like a ship, one time battered and buffeted with the bitter storms of trouble and despair, but now, full freighted with my cargo of years, safe at anchor in my peaceful haven Within the Capes.
THE END.
MRS. BURNETT’S
NOVELS AND STORIES
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