friendship is born of the gods, and immortal. Clouds and darkness may sweep around it, but within the cloud the glory lives undimmed. Death has no power over it. Time can not diminish, nor even dishonor annul it. Its direction may have been earthly, but itself is divine. You go back into your solitudes: all is silent as aforetime, but you can not forget that a Voice once resounded there. A Presence filled the valleys and gilded the mountain-tops,—breathed upon the plains, and they sprang up in lilies and roses,—flashed upon the waters, and they flowed to spheral melody,—swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled into song. And though now the warmth has faded out, though the ruddy tints and amber clearness have paled to ashen hues, though the murmuring melodies are dead, and forest, vale, and hill look hard and angular in the sharp air, you know that it is not death. The fire is unquenched beneath. You go your way not disconsolate. There needs but the Victorious Voice. At the touch of the prince's lips, life shall rise again and be perfected forevermore.

   "Well, Lucy has got Hiram!"

   There was such a strong inflection of triumphant joy in Miss Clegg's voice as she called the momentous news to her friend that it would have been at once—and most truthfully—surmised that the getting of Hiram had been a more than slight labor.

   Mrs. Lathrop was waiting by the fence, impatience written with a wandering reflection all over the serenity of her every-day expression. Susan only waited to lay aside her bonnet and mitts and then hastened to the fence herself.

   "Mrs. Lathrop, you never saw nor heard the like of this weddin' day in all your own days to be or to come, and I don't suppose there ever will be anything like it again, for Lucy Dill didn't cut no figger in her own weddin' a-

    tall

   ,—the whole thing was Gran'ma Mullins first, last and forever hereafter. I tell you it looked once or twice as if it wouldn't be a earthly possibility to marry Hiram away from his mother, and now that it's all over people can't do anything but say as after all Lucy ought to consider herself very lucky as things turned out, for if things hadn't turned out as they did turn out I don't believe anything on earth could have unhooked that son, and I'm willin' to swear that anywhere to any one.

   "Do you know, Mrs. Lathrop, that Gran'ma Mullins was so bad off last night as they had to put a mustard plaster onto her while Hiram went to see Lucy for 

 Prev. P 20/125 next