Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 156: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

946 “An. hour before he died, he opened his eyes and looked at me. I bent to him, for his lips were moving. ‘“* Ruth,’ he said, ‘I wish my son were here.’ “T held his hand, still bending over him to gather whatever poor, weak words might come. “* Ruth,’ he went on, ‘if he ever comes back, right and sane, give him the business. Give him the business, if your faith in him is completely restored.’ ** He didn’t speak again.” Seagrave sat there on the steps of his old home much as if he had been turned to stone. He sat there for a long time. At first his brain did not grasp the significance of what his wife had said. The thing that overwhelmed him, in those first few mo- ments, was that his father had turned back to him a little at the very end. Life was robbed of a good deal of its power to haunt him by that fact. His father, stern old man, must have had at least hope of him. That ‘was, in the smallest measure, what his slight THE U U ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. relenting meant. In its fullest measure it might mean that his father had never lost faith in him entirely. He might have fore- seen what had happened. That disposed of, his mind grasped the bigger thing as if there had been a sud- den illumination in it from a great white light. His father had said: “Give him the business if your faith in him is completely restored.” And Ruth was obeying the injunction in the terms in which his father had issued it. She would do no less. Seagrave turned round to her.. She was sitting in an attitude of waiting. That seemed to him suddenly to typify what her attitude had been all through the years. She had simply been waiting—for him and for this hour. He put an arm about her with a kind of timidity in the caress. She leaned to him and his other arm closed about her. He felt the sweet pressure of her lips once more. ‘* Ah,” she said at last, “it’s good to lay -my armor off!” END U U I AM MEMORY I AM the blossoms of a bygone spring, Pressed in the book of time, a lonely thing. The hunger of an unfulfilled desire, The ashes in the bed of last year’s fire. I am the balm that softens all life’s scars, The heights, the depths, the anguish and the stars, Into my cooling dark your minutes cast, IT am the temple of the living past. I am the days you joyed, the days you wept, In my vast vault of silence safely kept, I am your laughter, I your sobbing cry, The echo of a voice that cannot die. I am the link that bridges night and dawn, I am the soul that lives when all is gone, The yesterday, where this to-day shall dwell, I am your life, your death—your heaven, your hell. Tam Memory. Edna Jacques. MICLOOOKS (CO) (C@)