The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-11-17

stood there, looking at the sea of ice. He
went to his measuring pegs, two rods OF iron;
one sunk deep and frozen in the glacier, the
other drilled into a rock on the shore.
Triple blockheadn' said he again, thou art
worse than Spluthner. The Spluthner said
the glacier did not move; thou thou knowest
that it does" He sighted from his rods to
the mountain opposite. There was slight
and all but inperceptble change of direc-
ton from the day before.
He could not bear to see the English girl
again and all the next day was absent from
the inn. For month he stopped at He'll
genblut, and busted himself with his instru-
ments. The guides of the place greeted him
coldly every day, as they started on their
glacier excursions or their channels hunting.
But none the less did Zimmerman return
the following summer, and work upon his
great essay in refutation of the Spluthner.
Mrs. Knollys went back TO the little cot
tage in Surrey, and lived there. The chests
and cases she brought back lay unopened in
the store-room; the little rooms of the cot
tage that was to be their home remained bare
and unadorned, as Charles had seen them
last. She could not bring herself to alter
them now. What she had looked forward to
do with him she had no strength to do alone.
She rarely went out. There was no place
where she could go to think of him. He was
gone; gone from England, gone from the
very surface of the earth. If he had only
been buried in some quiet English church
yard, she thought-sOme green place lying
open to the sun, where she could go and scat
ter flowers on his grave, where she could sit
and look forward amid her tears to the time
when she should lie side by side with him
they would then be separated for her short
life alone. Now it seemed to her that they
were far apart forever
But late the next summer she had letter
from the place. 1t was from DR.. thinner
man. There is no need here to trace the
quaint German phrases, the Journalism, the
cold terms of science in which he made his
meaning plain. 1t spoke of erosion; of the
movement of the summer; of the action Of
the underwriters on the ice And it told
her, with tender sympathy, oddly blended
with the pride of scientific success, that he
had given years most careful study to the
place; with all his instruments of measure
ment he had tested the relentless glacier
flow; and it closed by assuring her that her
husband might yet be found-in five and
forty years. In five and forty years-the
| poor professor staked his scientific reputa-
ton on the fact-in five and forty years she
might return, and the glacier would give up
its dead
This letter made Mrs. Knollys happier
Ii made her willing to live; it made her al
most long to live until old age-that her
Charles's body might be given back. She
took heart to beautify her little home. The
triting articles she had bought with Charles
were now brought out-the little curiosities
and pictures he had given her on their we'd
ding journey. She would ask how such and
such thing looked, turning her pretty
head to some kind visitor as she ranged
the m on the walls; now and then she would
have to lay the picture down and cry little
silently as she remembered where Charles
had told her it would look best Still she
sought to furnish the rooms as thew had
MANNED in min a. oh hor
surroundings, as nearly as she could. as they
had pictured them together. One room she
never went into; it was the room Charles
had meant to have for the nursery. She had
no child.
But she changed as we all change, with
the passing of the years. l first remember
her as woman middle-aged sweet-faced.
hardly like widow, nor yet like an old
maid. She was rather like young girl in
love, with her lover absent on a long Jour
ney. She lived more with the memory of
her husband, she chung to him more than if
she had had child. She never married. you
would have guessed that; but, after the pro-
lessons letter, she never quite seemed to re-
afize that her husband was dead. Was he
not coming back to ner?
Never in all my knowledge of dear En-
gish women have / known q woman so much
loved. In how many houses was she always
the most welcome guest How often we
boys would go to her for sympathy 1 know
she was the oonfidante of all orr love affairs.
| cannot speak for girls; but fancy she was
much the same with them. Many of us
owed our life'S happiness to her. She would
chide us gently in our pettiness and folly,
and teach us by her very presence and ex-
aaple what thing it was that alone
could keep life sweet. How we'll we all
remember the little Surrey cottage, the
little home Preside where the husband had
never been! l think she grew to imagine his
presence, even the presence of children; boys
curiy-headed, like Charles, and sweet, blue
eyed daughters; and the fact that it was all
imagining seemed but to make the place
more holy. Charles still lived to her as she
had believed him in the month that they
were married; he lived through life with her
as her young love had fancied he would be.
She never thought of evil that might have
occurred; of failing affection, of cares. Her
happiness was in her mind alone; so all the
earthly part was absent.
There were but two in her life-that
which was past and that which was to come.
She had lived through his loss, now she lived
on for his recovery. But, as l have said, she
changed, as all things mortal change-all but
the earth, and the ice stream and the stars
above it. She read much, and her mind grew
deep and broad, none the less gentle with it
all. She was wiser in the world; she knew
the depths OF human hope and sorrow. You
remember her only as an old lady
whom we loved Only her heart
did not change-I forgot that her heart and
the memory of that last loving smile upon
his face, as he bent down to look into her
eyes before ne slipped and fell. She lived on
and waited for his body, as possibly his other
self-who knows?-waited for hers As she
grew older she grew taller; her eyes were
quieter her hair little straighter, darker
than of yore; her face changed, only the ex-
preston remained the same. Mary Knoilys!
Human lives rarely look more than year,
or five ahead; Mary Knollys looked five and
forty. Many of us wait and grow weary
with waiting, for those few years alone, and
for some living friend: Mary Knollys waited
five and forty years-for the dead. Still.
after that first year, she never wore all black;
only silvery grays, and white with a black
ribbon or two; have said that she almost
seemed to think her husband living. She