It was a solemn and awful sight that night, witnessed alone by God and nature; the boat, which drifted down Silver Springs in the moonlight, bearing its two strange occupants—the one weird, bent, grotesque; the other, so silent, so white, so pathetic, in its dead loveliness. Not a leaf was stirring, not a sound heard, but the splash, splash of the old woman's oars, as her boat, with its strange, beautiful burden, drifted over the curious, transparent body of water; drifted until it reached Boiling Springs, then veered about and stood still. Gently and easily, as if it had been a babe, the old woman lifted the little body. Something of her fear had departed in the placid smile of the dead face. Tears rolled down her dusky face as she bent forward in obedience to the girl's curious request. For a moment the body rocked to and fro on the bosom of the water, upon which its happiest moments had been spent. The dead face smiled, and the wealth of hair gleamed in the moonlight like a sheen of gold. Every pebble was visible in the depths below. Suddenly, as if by magic, the body began sinking. The boiling of the spring had ceased, showing a peculiar little fissure in the rock from whence all the strange body of water came. The fissure slowly divided, received the dead body and closed again, shutting every vestige of it from view.
"Gord A'mighty, dat chile a angel sho' nuff. She mus' done talked to de Lawd; she knowed how all dat gwine to be," muttered the old woman, as she rowed back to her cabin in the moonlight.
A mocking-bird on the opposite shore sent forth a flood of silvery melody. "Hear dat now," muttered Aunt Silly; "dat bird done sendin' forth de weddin' song o' de bridegroom. Come on, Claire Douglass, yo' little bride am waitin' for you more pacifyin' den she waited many a long day."
The day following the death of Bernice Mayo was one never to be forgotten by the citizens of Ocala. Claire Douglass had just returned after a year's absence. He found his beautiful cousin (whom his father desired to become his wife) a guest at the home of his parents.
"Claire," said his father as they lingered over the breakfast table, "I have a fine, new skiff at Silver Springs, and I wish you to take your cousin for a row this morning; and, by the permission of you young people, I shall make one of your party."
"Delightful, uncle," cried the girl; and Claire, while he turned a trifle pale at the thought of returning to the spot where all that had given color to his life had transpired, could only acquiesce.
Claire Douglass looked unusually handsome as the party drifted down Silver Springs in the April sunshine, but there was a curious pallor on his face, and the uncle and niece were left to carry on all the conversation. What a contrast the blooming girl in April sunshine bore to the one in the solemn moonlight, who had drifted over the same water the evening before! As the skiff neared Boiling Springs the party noted a little boat hovering over it. The boat was rowed by Aunt Silly; and its other occupant was an old woman, whose eyes were swollen with weeping. The skiff paused beside the little rowboat, and the occupants of each gazed into the curious, transparent depths below.
Suddenly the niece cried out, "Oh, see, that looks like a hand; a little human hand!" Plainer and more visible it grew, the little white hand with its gold chain locked above the slender wrist. Ah, little hand, Claire Douglass would have known you among ten thousand hands! His face was white as death and he gasped as though choking. All were intent upon the scene below. Suddenly the boiling of the water ceased, and out upon a rock in its transparent depths, like a broken, beautiful lily, lay Bernice Mayo, her golden hair floating on the sand, her dead face smiling placidly, as if at last a halo of peace had descended upon the tired spirit, and the broken heart had found rest. With a wild cry that pierced even the heart of the mother, who for the last time in life gazed upon the dead face of her child, Claire Douglass dashed overboard, diving deeper, ever deeper, until he caught in his arms the little figure of his dead love.
Then once more the rock divided and closed, shutting from view forever the lovers, who lay locked in each other's embrace. And again the water whirled and boiled in its mad fury, as if to defy the puny will of him who would have separated what God had joined together.
As for the first time the secret bridal chamber of Silver Springs has been made known to the world, it will be interesting to its future visitors, as they approach that part of it known as "Boiling Springs," to note in the whir of the water beneath (the only part of the water not perfectly placid) the constant shower of tiny, pearl-like shells poured forth from the fissure in the rock, and which Aunt Silly says are the jewels the angels gave Bernice Mayo upon her wedding morning when her lover joined her in their fairy palace in Silver Springs. There is, too, a curious flower growing in the springs—a flower with leaf like a lily, and a blossom shaped like an orange blossom. Its peculiar waxy whiteness and yellow petals are like Bernice Mayo's face and hair, Aunt Silly says, and she calls them "Bernice Bridal Wreath." There is a legend among the young people of Ocala that a woman presented with one of these blossoms will become a bride ere the close of the year.