Not in vain had been her early teachings and loving, self-sacrificing patience and forbearance, while he was yet a wilful, headstrong youngster. As, gently, and with a mother’s tact, she strove to curb his faults and instil into him—through love, and love alone—truth, honesty, and the main principles of right and wrong.
Not in vain had she entered into her rest and, as an angel in the stead of a beautiful, pure, true-hearted woman, interceded for the souls of both men in their tempestuous journey through life.
Long and wistfully the Sergeant gazed into the grave, sweet eyes and proud, clean-cut features—so like his own—and his stern bronzed face became softened and glorified with a wave of ineffable filial devotion too sacred for words.
“Mother!” he whispered brokenly. “Mother! Oh, Mother!” and dropped his head upon his outstretched arms across the table.
But grief—no matter however sincere and true—to the average healthy man is but a transient emotion. Ellis was no dissembler, and sadly though he mourned the loss of his old friend, as the first transports of his sorrow subsided and he became calmer, a slow, dim realization of the tremendous possibilities of his good fortune began to flood his mind.
For to him it meant—freedom, at last, from all the unavoidable, petty, sordid worries connected with the calling that he followed. No more gloomy outlooks upon life in general, or pessimistic forebodings arising from the consciousness of straightened means. Free at last to wander around the earth at will and visit all its beauty spots that he had read or heard about. Free to enjoy all the pleasures of the world that money can command. He was still only a comparatively young man, strong and active far beyond the average.
And, above all, it meant—and the very thought of his presumption stirred him strangely and caused a mighty wave of long-pent-up love to surge through his heart—perhaps also it meant—Mary.
So the joy of life filled him and transfigured his scarred, somber face with a dreamy expression of happiness that lies beyond the power of mere words to adequately describe. No more was the ideal life that he had so often—ah! how often?—pictured longingly to himself in his fits of morbid, spiritless depression, only a monotonous repetition of hopeless empty dreams. It actually lay now within his power to gratify his heart’s desires to their fullest extent.
And then—to the weary man in that humble abode, which was, nevertheless, all that he could call “Home,” there appeared a wondrous fantasy which, in its awe-inspiring, majestic grandeur, might have been likened, almost, unto some allegory, or a scene in the Revelation. With mind absolutely, utterly detached from all things material, he sat there motionless, as if in a dream, and it began to float before his far-away eyes like a filmy roseate mirage.
For, in his exalted imagination, it seemed to him that he was standing upon the shores of a great sparkling crystal sea, as it were, in the first faint flush of a radiant dawn. Purple, crimson, saffron-yellow and turquoise, the morning lights stole in succession across the sleeping world, and slowly—slowly, in the mystic East—the flashing rays of a magnificent sunrise began to creep over the rim of the horizon, transforming the gleaming waste of waters into a vast expanse of golden flame.