The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-01-21
the horse, lest Philip should not have

the horse, lest Philip should not have time to stop it.
 Max saw the horse rear and start back. He saw that Philip had sprung to the ground and was safe. Then the slippery board on which he stood seemed to glide from under his feet. He clutched at the rail, and heard it break. He tried to seize something anything to save himself-and his hands only held cold water. Some thing seemed to strike his head and blind him. Max, don't want you to go. Come back soon to me, darling. The words sounded in his ears through the darkness, and blindness and strange, numb pain, so that he did not hear the rushing of the waters as they closed over him.
 Max, 1 don't want you to go. Come back soon to me, darling"
 There was an awful stiffness in the room, the air was filled with the heavy scent of hot-house flowers, the blinds were drawn, and the cold Jan- uary sunlight shone duly through them, just touching with pale light the sharp outlines of the long, still figure that lay, covered with ( white sheet, on the bed.
 "Max, l don't want you to go. Come back, soon to me, darling"
 The words broke through the si- lence, and darkness, and heavy shad- ows. Did he hear them, or speak them, or were they but a memory? Everything was still and dim, and Max tancied those words the last thought of life, as he sank in the river.
 But no, the dark shadows were lift ing, and slowly Max began to realize that he was returning to life, not leaving it. He tried to raise his hands, as they lay across on his breast, but could not. He opened his eyes for a second, but found his face was cov- cred. Then he understood what had happened, and where he was, and knew that his friends had thought him dead.
 He knew this, but only dimly; not with fear or horror, but with dreamy wonder. Presently, of course, some one would come into the room, and he would speak, and they would lift the handkerchief from his face, and take his hands and lift him up from out the darkness and the shadow of death.
 He tried to cry out, that he might know if he had strength to make him. self heard, hut his voice sounded so weak and strange and far off that he could not tell whether that, too, were not a memory.
 Then he heard other sounds, indis- tinct at first, then more clearly, foot steps, and voices, and the sound of weeping, and he prayed for more strength, because Muriel was weeping for him, and he had no voice to toll her he was alive.
 She was speaking.
 "Philip, you are not angry with him now?" And Philip answered :: "Heaven forbid, when he lies there in my stead, and when have found my friend again, who was lost beyond all hopew
 "But he is dead-dead '" she sobbed.
 'I can understand this" went on Philip; "this is in keeping. I think he is satisfied with himself now. He wronged you and me, Muriel, and he wronged himself most of all but he has atoned to all three now-to me, for he died for me: to you, for he has washed out the one stain on his honor. We all three can say, 1t is we'll Far better that he should lie there than fearing to meet my eyes or touch your hand"
 "Speak well of him. I want to hear you speak well of him. Say you feel no bitterness against him now"
 "I can speak we'll of him, for I have felt no bitterness against him these many days. You know what I felt and said at first; but afterwards, Mur- iel, did not you, his wife, see? The shame of that treachery was breaking his heart"
 Muriel gave little cry, and Philip went on:
 "When I remembered all the years of his true, noble life, and our long  friendship, with never a cloud or a doubt, thought if his falseness had wounded me, it had killed him, for he could never be the Max Simmond he and l had known any more-and he knew it, too"
 Let her speak now; here in the presence of her dead husband let her speak, and say the falsehood was hers, not his; and that she-she only-in her childish vanity which could not bear to be blamed, in her miserable, cowardly fear of deserved reproaches, had slandered the noblest husband, the trucst friend, that ever lived.
 She only sobbed out his name, and broke again into wild weeping; and Philip spoke again: