HENNION and Camilla were married in the fall when the maple leaves were turning yellow and red. It may be that Camilla thought of herself as one consenting with humility to enter a quiet gateway, the shelter of a garden whose walks and borders she knew; and it may be that she was mistaken and found it a strange garden with many an herb of grace, and many an old-fashioned perennial as fairly embroidered as any that grow in Arcadia; for when one has found that the birth of one of the common flowers and hardy perennials comes as wonderfully out of the deeps as the birth of a new day, it may be that one understands heaven even better than when floating in Arcadia among its morning islands.

She could never truly have a working share in Dick's working life. She could sympathise with its efforts and achievements, but never walk even with him along that road. He would come to her tired, asking for home and rest, but never sick of soul, asking for healing, nor troubled and confused, asking for help. It was not his nature. One must take the measure of one's destiny and find happiness therein. After all, when that is found, it is found to be a quite measureless thing; and therefore the place where it is found must be a spacious place after all, a high-roofed and wide-walled habitation.

Who is so rich in happiness as to have any to throw away? We are beggars rather than choosers in that commodity. And Time, who is represented with his hourglass for measuring, his scythe for destruction, his forelock for the grasp of the vigilant, except for his title of Father Time, has been given no symbol definitely pointing to that kindness of his as of a good shepherd, that medicinal touch as of a wise physician, that curious untangling of tangled skeins as of a patient weaver, that solution of improbable equations as of a profound algebraist. But yet a little while, and let the winds freshen the air and the waters go their clean rounds again, and lo! he has shepherded us home from the desert, and comforted us in new garments, and turned our minus into plus by a judicious shifting across the equation. Shall we not give him his crook, his medicine case and license to practise, his loom, his stylus and tablets, and by oracle declare him “the Wisest,” and build him a temple, and consult his auspices, and be no more petulant if he nurtures other seeds than those of our planting, the slow, old-fashioned, silent gardener? We know no oracle but Time, yet we are always harking after another. He is a fluent, dusky, imperturbable person, resembling the Muscadine River. He goes on forever, and yet remains. His answers are Delphic and ambiguous. Alas! he tends to drown enthusiasm. Who is the wisest? “The one who knows that he knows nothing,” quoth your cynic oracle. What is justice? “A solemn lady, but with so bandaged eyes that she cannot see the impish capers of her scales.” What is happiness? As to that he answers more kindly. “In the main,” he says, “happiness is a hardy perennial.”

The “observer of decades,” who came to Port Argent some years later, found it proud of its parks, its boulevard, and railroad stations, its new court house, and jail, and manual training school; proud of its rapid growth, and indignant at the inadequacy of the national census. He was shown the new streets, and driven through suburbs where lately pasture and cornfields had been. He found Port Argent still in the main electric, ungainly, and full of growing pains, its problem of municipal government still inaccurately solved, the system not so satisfactory a structure as the railroad bridge below the boathouses, built by Dick Hennion for the North Shore Railroad. In shop and street and office the tide of its life was pouring on, and its citizens held singular language. Its sparrows were twittering in the maples, bustling, quarrelling, yet not permanently interested in either the sins or the wrongs of their neighbours, but going tolerantly to sleep at night. Here and there a bluebird was singing apart its plaintive, unfinished “Lulu-lu.”

He inquired of one of Port Argent's citizens for news, and heard that the “Independent Reformers” had won an election sometime back; that they were out again now, and inclined to be vituperative among themselves; that Port Argent was again led by Marve Wood's ring, which was not such a distressing ring as it might be. Hennion was not in it now. No, but he was suspected of carrying weight still in the party councils, which perhaps accounted for the “ring's” not being so distressing as it might be.

“He did more than he talked about,” said the garrulous citizen. “But speaking of talkers, there was a man here once named Aidee. You've heard of him. He's getting celebrated. Well, I'm a business man, and stick to my times. But I read Aidee's books. It's a good thing to do that much.”

The observer of decades left the garrulous citizen, and went down Lower Bank Street. He noted the shapeless, indifferent mass and contour of the buildings on the river-front, the litter of the wharves, the lounging black barges beside them, the rumble of traffic on the bridge and in distant streets, the dusky, gliding river lapping the stone piers and wooden piles, and going on forever while men come and go. He thought how the stone piers would sometime waste and fall, and the Muscadine would still go on, turbid and unperturbed.

“Adaptability seems the great test of permanence,” he thought. “Whatever is rigid is fragile.”

In front of the Champney house he stopped and looked up past the lawn and saw old Henry Champney, sitting in a wicker chair that was planted on the gravel walk. He was leaning forward, his chin on his cane, and gazing absorbed at his two grandchildren at his feet, a brown-haired child and a dark-haired baby. They were digging holes in the gravel with iron spoons.

What with the street, the railway, and the river, it might almost be said that from the Champney lawns one watched the world go by, clattering, rolling, puffing, travelling these its three concurrent highways. But Henry Champney seemed to take no interest now in this world's triple highways, nor to hear their clamour, but only cared now to watch the dark-haired baby, and listen to the little cooing voices.

THE END