to bear.' 'I am brought into so great trouble and misery, that I go mourning all the day long.' 'I am feeble and sore smitten. I have roared for the very disquietness of my heart.""

A groan burst from him, like an echo of the words, and so deep and powerful that I started in alarm. Recov ering myself instantly, I proceeded,

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"My lovers and neighbors did stand looking upon my trouble, and my kinsmen stood afar off.'

He murmured some unintelligible words.

"As for me I was like a deaf man, and heard not; and as one that is dumb, who doth not open his mouth.'” He nodded his head, as if in assent.

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"For I will confess my wickedness and be sorry for my sin.'

A kind of hopeless shiver ran over him, and a deep sigh escaped his lips. Still turning the leaves at random, I alighted upon the twenty-second Psalm, and read on without any apparent pause. When I came to the sentences," Our fathers hoped in Thee-They called upon Thee, and were holpen.-But as for me, I am a worm and no man, a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people," he dropped his head heavily into his hands, and a long, struggling moan of incontrollable agony testified that the Word of God is, in truth, "sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow." The sound smote me with poignant pain and pity; not wittingly or willingly had I pressed so heavily upon his hidden sore. I began to look, trembling, for balm wherewith to dress the wound, and the thirty-second Psalm came opportunely to hand. The better to make him feel that his place was still secure in the sympathetic chain of human brotherhood, I laid my hand lightly on his shoulder as I read,-knowing that there is often a subtler sympathy in touch than in any word spoken afar off; and having lost, for the moment, that consciousness of moral re

pulsion which had hitherto made it so difficult for me to approach him.

When the Psalm was finished, I waited silently for the paroxysm to cease; then I said, quietly, "It is nearly time for the people to gather, sir, and Mrs. Warren says you are not dressed yet. Of course, you will not let Maggie go from you, without accompanying her as far on the way as you can."

And without seeking to extract any reply, or to look in his face, I went back to the house. A moment after, I heard him enter, and go up stairs.

In a short time the undertaker arrived, and brought into the death-chamber that long, narrow box, which, whether it be rich or plain, shows more clearly than anything else in the world, perhaps, how limited are the world's possessions, how bounded the world's hopes. If this life were all, and to end thus and there-who would care to live it?

So I thought, and so I said to Mr. Warren, who, I found, was standing by me, looking into the coffin with a face of utter loathing.

"You really believe in another life, then?" he asked, but in a listless, aimless way, as if the answer could in nowise concern him.

"Believe! I think I can say with Job, I KNOW that my Redeemer liveth, and that though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." He shook his head,-more, it appeared, in hopelessness than contradiction. "Look abroad in Nature; everything

dies."

"Yes, sir-to live again."

“Um―do you believe that the beasts live after death?” "There is no conclusive evidence against it, that I know of. The fact from which I chiefly draw an inference to the contrary, furnishes as strong a presumption in favor of man's immortality.”

He began to look interested. "What is it?"

"Well, so far as we can judge, the beasts have no hope nor expectation of another existence. And it seems to me that God would be likely to impart a hope that He designed to fulfil, inasmuch as He never implants one that He means to disappoint."

"I don't know about that," he answered, in a vague, in ward tone. "I once hoped to be-happy."

"You can be yet, sir, if you will seek for happiness in that only, narrow path which leads to it. They who choose to walk in the broad way of self-indulgence, and the pride of human reason, are fools, deceiving their own selves."

"And rich," he continued, in the same dreamy voice. "Yes, sir, with the riches that do not perish in the using."

"And handsome and brilliant."

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They shall be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when I make up my jewels."

He turned upon me with a sudden and-to me-inexplicable sharpness. "I wish you would find an answer somewhere besides in the Bible."

"I would, sir, if I could find an apter one elsewhere,” I answered, quietly. He looked at me a moment, then his eyes fell.

All things now being ready, the undertaker stepped to Maggie's side, and, signaling to Aunt Vin to help him, was about to lift her into the coffin; when Mr. Warren started forward, crying out, in a loud voice, and with flashing eyes, "What are you doing there! In Heaven's name, let my dead child alone!"

The man shrank back, and stared hard at him, in amazement and perplexity.

"I don't want any strange hands about her," continued the father, after a moment, trying to control his irritation; but still with a shade of bitter resentment in his tone. "If you'll just step out into the kitchen there, we will do it ourselves,-thank you."

The man obeyed, and Mr. Warren carefully closed the door after him, muttering between his teeth, "How dare he touch her!" Certainly, his character is a study of such a nature as was never before presented to my eyes. What a curious combination of delicacy and coarseness, of refinement and crudity!

We transferred the still, white maiden to her narrow couch-we four-with very gentle hands; it falling to my share to lay the lovely head, with its face of unearthly peacefulness, on its last, low pillow. A tear fell beside it. I bethought me that Maggie Warren was the first and only being, in many long days, to call out in me that species of affection which is so quickly begotten of helplessness and help, and to respond to it with a certain degree of appreciation and preference; and I regretted to lose even that small sunbeam out of my life. To be helpful is not to be happy, I know; but it is one of the elements of happiness that I least like to miss.

Lastly, I put a fresh cross and wreath in their places, and fastened to the coffin-lid a dove made entirely of lilies of the valley; which last offering elicited from Jack a bit of unqualified commendation.

"Golly! ain't that fine!"

"Perhaps Miss Frost will tell you what it means," said his mother, quietly.

"It is the emblem of the Holy Ghost, whose sweetest name is Comforter,"" I answered, instantly perceiving her intent. "If it reminds us also of that first dove noted in the world's history, which found no rest nor shelter till it returned to the ark from whence it set forth; and helps us, by means of these exterior types, to understand that the human soul finds never perfect peace, nor safe home, until it resorts to that God who created it; my dove will have done its perfect work, Jack."

Jack stared, uncomprehending; Mr. Warren turned hastily away.

XIII.

THE DOVE BEFORE THE ALTAR.

HE funeral guests were now assembling fast. A goodly company of grave-looking matrons, quaintly respectable in well-pre served old fashioned garments, was already seated in the kitchen; filling it with a whispering buzz, as of a swarm of flies.. Knots of bright-faced girls were standing in the corners, and around the front door-yard; so thoroughly imbued with the glow and freshness of this first day of June by their long walk over breezy hills and through leafarched lanes, that all their efforts to subside from gayety into gloom, only resulted in a compromise of subdued cheerfulness. Not until they entered the little room where Maggie lay, and looked at her white face, did their pretty play of smile and dimple quite cease, and a quick moisture suffuse and soften their sparkling eyes. There were stout, steadygoing farmers, too, gathered about the step and gate (the house being too small to hold half the assemblage) and talking intermittently in low, grave tones; and a row of young men leaning on the fence; and a sprinkling of boys, full of curiosity and restlessness, hanging about their eld ers with upturned faces and wide-open ears. And all up and down the road, on either side, was a string of country. wagons, of every antique and clumsy pattern; and horses,