rs. There in the midst stood the
berceaunette in which I had lain when I was a child.

My father took me up to it--at first I saw only the flowers, pale
snowdrops and blue violets with green leaves; then I saw a sweet waxen
face with closed eyes and lips.

Oh! baby brother, how often I have longed to be at rest with you! I was
not frightened; the beautiful, tiny face, now still in death, had no
horrors for me.

"May I kiss him, papa?" I asked. Oh, baby brother, why not have stayed
with us for a few hours at least? I should like to have seen his pretty
eyes and to have seen him just once with him lips parted; as it was,
they were closed in the sweet, silent smile of death.

"Papa, what name should you have given him had he lived?" I asked.

"Your mother's favorite name--Gerald," he replied. "Ah, Laura, had he
lived, poor little fellow, he would have been 'Sir Gerald Tayne, of
Tayne Abbey.' How much dies in a child--who knows what manner of man
this child might have been or what he might have done?"

"Papa, what is the use of such a tiny life?" I asked.

"Not even a philosopher could answer that question," said my father.

I kissed the sweet, baby face again and again. "Good-by, my little
brother," I said. Ah! where shall I see his face again?

CHAPTER IV.

My mother was in danger and my baby brother dead. The gloom that lay
over our house was something never to be forgotten; the silence that was
never broken by one laugh or one cheerful word, the scared faces--for
every one loved "my lady." One fine morning, when the snowdrops had
grown more plentiful, and there was a faint sign of the coming spring in
the air, they took my baby brother to bury him. Such a tiny coffin, such
tiny white wreaths, a little white pall covered with flowers. My father
would not let black come near him.

My father wept bitter tears.

"There sleeps my little son and heir, Laura," he said to me--"my little
boy. It is as though he had just peeped out of Heaven at this world,
and, not liking it, had gone back again."

A pretty little white monument was put up to the baby Gerald. My mother
chose the epitaph, which I had always thought so pretty. It was simply
this--"The angels gather such lilies for God."

By degrees some little sunshine stole back, the dreadful silence
lessened, the servants began to walk about without list slippers, the
birds were carried back to the beautiful aviary--my mother's favorite
nook; the doctors