h word it had uttered.

The day of the funeral came. For nights before the mother had not
slept; but in the morning twilight she now slept, overcome by
weariness; and in the meantime the coffin was carried into a distant
room, and there nailed down, that she might not hear the blows of the
hammer.

When she awoke, and wanted to see her child, the husband said,

"We have nailed down the coffin. It was necessary to do so."

"When God is hard towards me, how should men be better?" she said,
with sobs and groans.

The coffin was carried to the grave. The disconsolate mother sat with
her young daughters. She looked at her daughters, and yet did not see
them, for her thoughts were no longer busy at the domestic hearth. She
gave herself up to her grief, and grief tossed her to and fro as the
sea tosses a ship without compass or rudder. So the day of the funeral
passed away, and similar days followed, of dark, wearying pain. With
moist eyes and mournful glances, the sorrowing daughters and the
afflicted husband looked upon her who would not hear their words of
comfort; and, indeed, what words of comfort could they speak to her,
when they themselves were heavily bowed down?

It seemed as though she knew sleep no more; and yet he would now have
been her best friend, who would have strengthened her body, and poured
peace into her soul. They persuaded her to seek her couch, and she lay
still there, like one who slept. One night her husband was listening,
as he often did, to her breathing, and fully believed that she had now
found rest and relief. He folded his arms and prayed, and soon sank
into a deep healthy sleep; and thus he did not notice that his wife
rose, threw on her clothes, and silently glided from the house, to go
where her thoughts always lingered--to the grave which held her child.
She stepped through the garden of the house, and over the fields,
where a path led to the churchyard. No one saw her on her walk--she
had seen nobody, for her eyes were fixed upon the one goal of her
journey.

It was a lovely starlight night; the air was still mild; it was in the
beginning of September. She entered the churchyard, and stood by the
little grave, which looked like a great nosegay of fragrant flowers.
She sat down, and bowed her head low over the grave, as if she could
have seen her child through the intervening earth, her little boy,
whose smile rose so vividly before her--the gentle expression of whose
eyes, even on