to him--"Lihu's
gone!"--the poor boy, realizing only at that instant their terrible
meaning, that his father had indeed gone, gone away from him forever, ran
forward a pace or two, and then fell, with his face to the ground.

So he lay, shaking and sobbing helplessly.

Grandma Bartlett, standing in the door, studied him for some moments with
her fossilized eyes:--

"Fatherless and motherless, now," said she. "Poor creetur, humph! Vary
sahd."

Then she blinked, and, simultaneously, the subject seemed to have slipped
from her mind, and she to have become vaguely contemplative concerning
worlds and ages remote.

The boy was still lying prone on the ground, when I left the place of
mourning with Grandma and Madeline. I spoke to him, and shrank
instinctively from his face as he turned it towards me. It was swollen
and disfigured with weeping. He had bruised it, too, in falling. He rose,
trembling, and walked with me. For my own part, the emotional had given
place to feelings of a more sustained and ordinary nature.

I strove to impress upon Harvey's mind the beautiful and poetic manner in
which his father had been released from his sufferings.

I reminded him of the shortness of life, "even from your point of view,
Harvey;" and the necessity there was always, for not allowing ourselves
to be overcome by our griefs or passions, or diverted from the supreme
satisfaction of performing our appointed tasks, etc.

And Harvey listened patiently throughout, and said "good night," with a
brave attempt at a smile, and a sob still choking in his throat.

I turned an instant, to look at him as he walked away. He wore,
generally, a coat of ministerial form and complexion; this, taken in
connection with his round, laughing face, his boyish figure, and
propensity for playing tricks, had often made me smile, hitherto. But,
now, there was something in the attitude of those long, black tails that
brought the tears to my eyes.

It occurred to me, indirectly, what Emily had said about my stringing
words together, and I marvelled if possibly my exhortation had soared
over poor Harvey's head and left his heart aching for an ordinary word of
sympathy, or a simple reference to One who as a man of sorrows, was best
fitted to understand and console his grief. To any sentiments of the
latter nature, Harvey was particularly susceptible.

"Children, all of them!" Thus gently apostrophizing the Wallencampers, I
dismissed the cause of my bri