Nicholas Harding followed in the same year as his namesake of All the Russias. The next and last—it seems but the other day—was Claire, his daughter, a loving and beloved wife, and a mother whose children miss and mourn her daily, though most of them have children of their own. Peace to her white hairs and true and tender heart! It is beating somewhere for them still.
But a little while ago, this story might have left them still together—the bent old man with the thoughtful eye and the many wrinkles—the white-haired, sweet-faced, motherly woman. Yet then their story had not been told, for there is that in it which Thomas Erichsen never would tell his wife. He never told how they tried to cut his heart out with the lash; he never told her how nearly they succeeded. And still, when he thinks of that, is he grateful to the long-dead maniac to whom he owed so various a debt.
It is the old man’s pleasure to hear and read of the noble Colony sprung miraculously from the cruel dust and ashes of sixty years ago; he has never revisited it. In the Old Country he has lived and he will die. Less fortunate than Claire, his lot is that harder one of the last to go. But his life has been always brave, and he neither fears nor courts his death.
THE END
