There was only one entry after that, and it ran:
"I am tired and my work is done. Now I can rejoin you, having waited so long. When I close my eyes to-night I shall see your face—I know I shall. So Good-night, Isobel! Or should I say, Good-morning?"
The clock on the landing was striking three—the most solemn hour of day and night, for it is the hour between. Stowell, with a heavy heart, the book in one hand and his candle in the other, was going to bed. Reaching the door of his father's room he dropped to his knees.
"Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me!"
But after a while a light seemed to break on him. Where his father now was he would know that there was no help for it—that he, too, must follow the line of honour.
"Yes," he thought, rising and going on to his own room. "I must do the right, whatever it may cost me."
IV
On the morning of the burial, Stowell received a letter from Bessie Collister:
"Dere Victor,
"I am sorry to here from Alick about the death of the Deemster you must feel it verry much the loss of such a good kinde father everrybody is talking about him and saying he was the best gentleman that everr was thank you for the nice cloths Mrs. Quayle bought me. Alick is very kinde—