rocks, so that Edward and I may never be disturbed. I want no
headstone, no epitaph. Just the stones as they were hewn by God."

David Windom promised. He was alone in the room with her when she
died.

IV

Twenty years passed. Windom came at last to the end of his days.
He had fulfilled his promises to Alix. He had taken good care of
her daughter, he had given her everything in his power to give,
and he had worshipped her because she was like both of the Alixes
he had loved. She was Alix Crown,--Alix the Third, he called her.

On the day of his death, Windom confessed the crime of that far
off night in March. In the presence of his lawyer, his doctor,
his granddaughter and the prosecuting attorney of the county, he
revealed the secret he had kept for a score of years. The mystery
of Edward Crown's disappearance was cleared up, and for the first
time in her young life Alix was shorn of the romantic notion that
one day her missing father would appear in the flesh, out of the
silences, to claim her as his own. From earliest childhood, her
imagination had dealt with all manner of dramatic situations; she
had existed in the glamour of uncertainty; she had looked upon
herself as a character worthy of a place in some gripping tale of
romance. The mound of rocks on the crest of Quill's Window, surrounded
by a tall iron paling fence with its padlocked gate, covered only
the body of the mother she had never seen. She did not know until
this enlightening hour that her father was also there and had been
throughout all the years in which fancy played so important a part.