spel of Christ."

"Pah! you're a false priest!"--defiantly. "Where's the groom?"

And Adele, hoping to pacify the poor woman, draws from her reticule the
little rosary, and, holding it before the eyes of the sufferer, says,
timidly,--

"My dear Madam, it is I,--Adele; I have brought what you asked of me; I
have come to comfort you."

And the woman, over whose face there ran instantly a marvellous change,
snatched the rosary, and pressed it convulsively to her lips; then,
looking for a moment yearningly, with that strange double gaze of hers,
upon the face of Adele, she sprang toward her, and, wreathing her arms
about her, drew her fast upon her bosom,--

"_Ma fille! ma pauvre fille!_"

The boy slipped down from the bed,--his little importance being
over,--and was gone. The Doctor's lips moved in silent prayer for five
minutes or more, wholly undisturbed, while the twain were locked in that
embrace. Then the old gentleman, stooping, says,--

"Adaly, will she listen to me now?"

And Adele, turning a frightened face to him, whispers,--

"She's sleeping; unclasp her hands; she holds me tightly."

And the Doctor, with tremulous fingers, does her bidding.

Adele, still whispering, says,--

"She's calm now; she'll talk with us when she wakes, New Papa."

"My poor child," said the Doctor, solemnly, and with a full voice,
"she'll never wake again."

And Adele, turning,--in a maze of terror, as she thought of that
death-clasp,--saw that her eyes had fallen open,--open, and fixed, and
lustreless. So quietly Death had come upon his errand, and accomplished
it, and gone; while without, the fowls, undisturbed, were still blinking
idly in the sunshine under the lea of the wall, and the yellow
chrysanthemums were fluttering in the wind.

XLI.

In the winter of 1838-9, Adele, much to the delight of Dr. Johns, avowed
at last her wish to join herself to the little church-flock over which
the good parson still held serenely his office of shepherd. And as she
told him quietly of her desire, sitting before him there in the study of
the parsonage, without urgence upon his part, it was as if a bright
gleam of sunshine had darted suddenly through the wintry clouds, and
bathed both of them in its warm effulgence. The good man, rising from
his chair and crossing over to her place, touched her forehead with as
tender and loving a kiss as ever he had bestowed upon the lost Rachel.

He had seen too closely the development of h