The sun was now right down upon the mountain top, and the red gleams
fell upon my face, so that it was bathed in rosy light. With one impulse
the men sank on their knees and a deep and earnest Amen broke from all
as their eyes followed the pointing of his finger. The dying man
spoke:--
Now God be thanked that all has not been in vain! See! the snow is not
more stainless than her forehead! The curse has passed away!
And, to our bitter grief, with a smile and in silence, he died, a
gallant gentleman.
NOTE
Seven years ago we all went through the flames; and the happiness of
some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured. It
is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy s birthday is the same
day as that on which Quincey Morris died. His mother holds, I know, the
secret belief that some of our brave friend s spirit has passed into
him. His bundle of names links all our little band of men together; but
we call him Quincey.
In the summer of this year we made a journey to Transylvania, and went
over the old ground which was, and is, to us so full of vivid and
terrible memories. It was almost impossible to believe that the things
which we had seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears were
living truths. Every trace of all that had been was blotted out. The
castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of desolation.
When we got home we were talking of the old time--which we could all
look back on without despair, for Godalming and Seward are both happily
married. I took the papers from the safe where they had been ever since
our return so long ago. We were struck with the fact, that in all the
mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one
authentic document; nothing but a mass of typewriting, except the later
385