"Oh, can this be the last of beautiful Ivarene and dear, brave Bruce?"
Choking back their sobs, they all knelt in a circle, while Mrs. Warlow's voice rose in a passionate, fervid prayer; then tenderly, with loving care, they carried the remains down to the Warlow carriage, leaving Mora and Clifford still lingering by the vacant mound.
They stood in silence a moment, the only sound the soft rustle of wild-ivy that half draped the cliff in its mottled foliage of crimson, green, and bronze; the radiant sunlight from the cloudless sky lit up the sunflowers and gentian that grew in stunted clusters on the hillside, while the sumac flaunted its plumes of scarlet, gold, and purple along the rifts of the white, rocky wall.
Lifting their gaze from the open grave, their eyes met in a swift flash of joy, while a half-puzzled look of delight and recognition struggled over their faces; then, bounding lightly over the open grave, Clifford whispered in a tone of unspeakable love and yearning:—
"Oh, Ivarene, my sweetheart of long ago, we meet at last!"
"Then it is as I have dreamed—and you are Bruce!" she answered, with a sob of joy, while springing into his outstretched arms.
"Yes, love, I am convinced that we meet again after all these years of waiting. Though to the world we may be only Mora and Clifford, yet, darling, to each other we will ever be Ivarene and Bruce," he replied, while raining kisses upon her upturned, radiant face.
Ah! how can I tell of the serene wedding morn that marked that happy day when Clifford and Mora paced back and forth on the sunlighted terrace at the Stone Corral, now no longer a modest cottage, but a stately though quaint mansion of red sandstone. The tender, blue haze of Indian summer brooded over the valley, where the fields of wheat shone dewy and green, and the newly-mown meadows stretched away like a verdant carpet far out onto the highlands, miles upon miles—all their own. The marble fountain threw a glittering sheen of silver high in the air, while the breeze swept the blossom-laden tendrils that trailed down the showy vases, and swayed the limbs of the old elm to and fro about the gables of the elegant home.
"Oh, Ivarene, dear love! how strange it is to take up the thread of our happiness on the spot, almost where our lives went out in such black despair just twenty-six years ago! I know why you wish to have our bridal here, darling; for it was here, at the Old Corral, that our former trials overwhelmed us, and it is doubly sweet to begin happiness again on this spot."
"Bruce, my darling, I can remember nothing of the old life and its trials, that ended at our grave on Antelope Butte; but my love for you—ah! that can never perish. It has survived even the horrors of that lonesome tomb. It is strange we only recognized each other at that empty grave; but I had always felt such a longing to meet some one, that now I know it was the spirit within me crying dumbly for you; and oh! the unutterable content when at length I met you, and the joy of only being with you now,—it is more than Eden!"