This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
320
Left to Themselves.

Mrs. Probasco, who said that "the boys hadn't come all the way from New York to listen to that old yarn." Mrs. Probasco's grandfather is still "feeble, very feeble." But he survives and bids fair to do so for an indefinite time; and so the little island will probably not soon lose its satisfied tenants from its wave-bound circuit.

The Ossokosee flourishes, enlarged, and well-kept as ever. Philip and Gerald and Mr. Saxton join Mr. Marcy there each summer, and then there are great doings in a highly private and quiet way. I don't think the two friends ever walk up one particular path in the evening without Gerald's recalling (though he may not speak of it) the night when, so much younger, he listened with Philip to those words of General Sawtelle within the embowered Summer-house.

The hope and resolve of that evening were indeed granted. To-day in the little cemetery near the hotel is a marble monument in place of a simpler stone, formerly there. One reads that it is—"To the Memory of Reginald Touchtone—Cleared of the Stain of a False Charge upon his Honor—After Many Days—