"Exercise will warm me and give me strength," she answered. It did, and when they reached the valley she was quite herself again. It was the middle of the afternoon when they entered the valley, and gazing back at old Snow-Top, with his towering summit piercing the skies, they thanked God for their deliverance. About the snowy peak there clung a rift of vapor, as if some passing cloud had caught upon it and torn off a fragment.
"I don't care to venture up there again," said John.
"Nor do I," sighed his companion. "So peaceful, so sweet and so dear is our little home, that I am almost content with it."
"I am, likewise."
For two or three days no evil effects were perceivable from their journey save a weariness on the part of Blanche, which John flattered himself would pass away. He sat with her and talked more than had been his custom. She seemed to grow better in his eyes, for he had seen how uncomplaining she was, and how she nobly struggled to make his burden lighter. She spoke encouraging words of Virginia, told him of his wife and children, who had been described so often to her that she had a faithful picture of them in her mind. She would say:
"Your little Rebecca is now sixteen years of age, quite a young lady. She is beautiful, too. I know she is beautiful, for she has the dark eyes and hair of her mother."
"Blanche, beauty is not confined to black eyes and hair alone," said John.
She went on:
"And your little boy is a man now, twenty years of age, and he is no doubt strong, brave, gallant and noble. Surely you must be proud of such a son. Your wife has grown more wise with her distress, and she still looks to the ocean for the return of one for whom she will wait until the angel of death summons her to meet him in Heaven."
"Blanche, Blanche, how strangely you talk!"