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152
BEACHED KEELS

"Over there," said Heber, who had barely concealed a sombre pleasure in his office. He pointed to a corner where the sunlight still lay. "The rector had the stone put up," he added, as he turned away and left Harden alone once more.

Two stones of plain slate stood there under a stringy hackmatack. One he knew already; it bore the name "John Sebright," and the dates. On the other, made like the first but unspotted by the gray moss, was the name "Margaret Lee Sebright."

He stood there for a long time. It was evening before he returned to the house, and the last of the sunset shone pale over the jagged silhouette of fir-tops on the point, behind which the river flowed down unseen to the bay. He sat on the doorstep, thinking, far into the night. Outwardly he was master of himself, but in his heart the dreadful desperate calm was swept away from time to time by a flood of strange emotions: void, helpless wonder at what he should do with the fragments of a life so shattered; black hatred of his father and his brother, who had made