e offers of kind friends to remain, and was
alone with his dead. The coffin-lid had been removed, and he lifted
the dead-cloth from the face. He could not endure the sharp angle of
the nose, that so stabbed up into the dim night, unrelieved by the
other features.

The wrath of a strong, deep nature, thoroughly aroused, is sublime;
its grief, when stirred to its depths, is awful. Barton knew now
what had happened and what he had lost. The acuteness of his fine
organization had recovered its sharpest edge. The heavens had been
darkened for him nearly a year before, but now the solid earth had
been rent and one-half cloven away, and that was the half that
held the only hopes he had. He didn't calculate this now. Genius,
intellect, imagination, courage, pride, scorn, all the intensities of
his nature, all that he supposed he possessed, all that lay hidden
and unsuspected, arose in their might to overcome him now. He did not
think, he did not aspire, or hope, or fear, or dream, or remember: he
only felt, and bled, and moaned low, hopeless, helpless moans. If it
is given to some natures to enjoy intensely, so such correspondingly
suffer; and Bart, alone with his pale, cold, dead brother, through
this deep, silent night, abandoned himself utterly to the first
anguish at his loss, and it was wise. As it is healthful and needful
for young children to cry away their pains and aches, so the stricken
and pained soul finds relief in pouring itself out in oversweeping
grief.

The storm swept by and subsided, and Bart, kneeling by the coffin of
his brother, in the simple humility of a child, opened his heart
to the pitying eye of the Great Father. His lips did not move, but
steadily and reverently he turned to that sweet nearness of love and
compassion. Finally he asked that every unworthy thought, passion,
folly, or pride, might be exorcised from his heart and nature; and
then, holding himself in this steady and now sweet contemplation and
silent communion, a great calm came into his uplifted soul, and he
slept. And, as he passed from first slumber to oblivious and profound
sleep, there floated, through a celestial atmosphere, a radiant cloud,
on which was reclining a form of light and beauty. He thought it must
be his departed brother, but it turned fully towards him, and the face
was the face of Julia, with sweetest and tenderest compassion and love
in her eyes; and he slept profoundly.

In the full light of the early morning,