The Silent Shore

"Tell me no more," Penlyn said, "tell me no more."

"There is no more-only this, that I am glad to die. My life has been a curse since that day, I am thankful it is at an end. Had Guffanta not hurled me on to the glacier below, I think I must have taken it with my own hands."

"Guffanta!" Penlyn exclaimed, "is it he then who has done this?"

"It is he! He followed me from England here-in some strange way he was a witness to the murder-we met upon the pass and fought, he taxing me with being a murderer and a thief, and-and-ah! this is the end!"

His eyes closed, and Penlyn saw that his last moment was at hand. He called gently to Mrs. Smerdon, and she came in, and throwing herself by the side of the bed, took his hand and kissed it as she wept. The Curé entered at the same time and bent over him, and taking the Crucifix from his side, held it up before his eyes. Once they were fixed upon Penlyn with an imploring glance, and once they rested on his mother, and then they closed for ever.

"He is dead!" the priest said, "let us pray for the repose of his soul."

It was a few days afterwards that Ida Raughton, when walking up and down the paths at Belmont, heard the sound of carriage-wheels in the road outside, and knew that her lover was coming back to her. He had written from Switzerland saying that Smerdon was dead, and that he should wait to see him buried in the churchyard of St. Christoph-where many other English lay who had perished in the mountains-and he had that morning telegraphed from Paris to tell her that he was coming by the mail, and should be with her in the evening.

She walked swiftly to the house to meet him, but before she could reach it, he had come through the French windows of the morning-room, and advanced towards her.

"You have heard that he is dead, Ida?" he said, when he had kissed her, "it only remains for me to tell you that he died penitent and regretting his crime. It had weighed heavily upon him, and he was glad to go."

"And you forgave him, Gervase?" she asked.

"Yes. I forgave him. I could not but remember-as I saw him stretched there crushed and dying-that, though he had robbed me of a brother whom I must have come to love, he had sinned for me. Yes, if forgiveness belonged to me, I forgave him."

"Until we meet that brother in another world, Gervase, we have nothing but his memory to cherish. We must never forget his noble character."

"It shall be my constant thought," Penlyn answered, "to shape my life to what he would have wished it to be. And, Ida, so long as I live, his memory shall be second only in my heart to your own sweet self. Come, darling, it is growing late let us go in."

THE END