actions of a whole life stand in
review before the parting soul, she remembered how, as a little child,
she had wept bitterly on hearing the history of Inger. That time, and
those feelings, stood so prominently before the old woman's mind in
the hour of death, that she cried with intense emotion,--

"Lord, my God! have not I often, like Inger, trod under foot Thy
blessed gifts, and placed no value on them? Have I not often been
guilty of pride and vanity in my secret heart? But Thou, in Thy mercy,
didst not let me sink; Thou didst hold me up. Oh, forsake me not in my
last hour!"

And the aged woman's eyes closed, and her spirit's eyes opened to what
had been formerly invisible; and as Inger had been present in her
latest thoughts, she beheld her, and perceived how deep she had been
dragged downwards. At that sight the gentle being burst into tears;
and in the kingdom of heaven she stood like a child, and wept for the
fate of the unfortunate Inger. Her tears and her prayers sounded like
an echo down in the hollow form that confined the imprisoned,
miserable soul. That soul was overwhelmed by the unexpected love from
those realms afar. One of God's angels wept for her! Why was this
vouchsafed to her? The tortured spirit gathered, as it were, into one
thought, all the actions of its life--all that it had done; and it
shook with the violence of its remorse--remorse such as Inger had
never felt. Grief became her predominating feeling. She thought that
for her the gates of mercy would never open, and as in deep contrition
and self-abasement she thought thus, a ray of brightness penetrated
into the dismal abyss--a ray more vivid and glorious than the sunbeams
which thaw the snow figures that the children make in their gardens.
And this ray, more quickly than the snow-flake that falls upon a
child's warm mouth can be melted into a drop of water, caused Inger's
petrified figure to evaporate, and a little bird arose, following the
zigzag course of the ray, up towards the world that mankind inhabit.
But it seemed afraid and shy of everything around it; it felt ashamed
of itself; and apparently wishing to avoid all living creatures, it
sought, in haste, concealment in a dark recess in a crumbling wall.
Here it sat, and it crept into the farthest corner, trembling all
over. It could not sing, for it had no voice. For a long time it sat
quietly there before it ventured to look out and behold all the beauty
around. Yes, it was beau