All her portion of the work was finished now, and in the balmy brightness of that warm April afternoon she went into the fields where she could be alone beneath the soft, summer-like sky, and pour out her pent-up anguish into the ear of Him who had so often soothed and comforted her when other aids had failed. Last night, for the first time since she heard the dreadful news, she had dreamed of Mark, and when she awoke she still felt the pressure of his lips upon her brow, the touch of his arm upon her waist, and the thrilling clasp of his warm hand as it pressed and held her own. But that was a dream, a cruel delusion, and its memory made the day more dark and dreary as she went more slowly up the beaten path, pausing once beneath a chestnut tree and leaning her throbbing head against the shaggy bark as she heard in the distance the shrill whistle of the downward train from Albany, and thought, as she always did when she heard that whistle, "Oh, if that heralded Mark's return, how happy I should be." But many a sound like that had echoed across the Silverton hills, bringing no hope to her, and now, as it again died away in the Cedar Swamp, she pursued her way up the path till she reached the long, white ledge of rocks where with Katy she used to play, and where Bell Cameron had come with Lieutenant Bob, while Morris, too, had more than once led Katy there since the weather was so fine.
"The Lovers' Rock," some called it, for village boys and maidens knew the place, repairing to it often, whispering their vows beneath the overhanging pines, which whispered back again, and told the winds the story which, though so old, is always new to her who listens to him who tells.
Just underneath the spreading pine there was a large, flat stone, and there Helen sat down, gazing sadly upon the valley below, and the clear waters of Fairy Pond gleaming in the April sunshine, which lay so warmly on the grassy hills and flashed so brightly from the cupola at Linwood, where the national flag was flying. For a time Helen watched the banner as it shook its folds to the breeze, then, as she remembered with what a fearful price that flag had been saved from foul dishonor, she hid her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly: "God help me not to begrudge the price or think I paid too dearly for my country's rights. Oh, Mark, my murdered husband, I may be wrong, but you were dearer to me than many, many countries, and it is hard to give you up--hard to know that the notes of peace which even now float up to us from the South will not waken you in that grave which I can never see. Oh, Mark, my darling, my darling, I loved you so much, I miss you so much, I want you so much. God help me to bear. God help me to say, 'Thy will be done.'"