That night, after his guests had retired, Colonel Musgrave smoked a
cigarette on the front porch of Matocton. The moon, now in the zenith,
was bright and chill. After a while, Musgrave raised his face toward it,
and laughed.
"Isn't it--isn't it funny?" he demanded, echoing Anne's query ruefully.
"Eh, well! perhaps I still retained some lingering hope; in a season of
discomfort, most of us look vaguely for a miracle. And, at times, it
comes, but, more often, not; life isn't always a pantomime, with a fairy
god-mother waiting to break through the darkness in a burst of glory and
reunite the severed lovers, and transform their enemies into pantaloons.
In this case, it is certain that the fairy will not come. I am condemned
to be my own god in the machine."
Having demonstrated this to himself, Musgrave went into the house and
drugged his mind correcting proofsheets--for the _Lichfield Historical
Association's Quarterly Magazine_--and brought down to the year 1805 his
"List of Wills Recorded in Brummell County."