s get them in this part of England in October. It was
just such a night when my first wife died, and that is three years ago.
I remember how she sat up in her bed.

"Ah! those horrible elms," she said; "I wish you would have them cut
down, Frank; they cry like a woman," and I said I would, and just after
that she died, poor dear. And so the old elms stand, and I like their
music. It is a strange thing; I was half broken-hearted, for I loved her
dearly, and she loved me with all her life and strength, and now--I am
going to be married again.

"Frank, Frank, don't forget me!" Those were my wife's last words; and,
indeed, though I am going to be married again to-morrow, I have not
forgotten her. Nor shall I forget how Annie Guthrie (whom I am going to
marry now) came to see her the day before she died. I know that Annie
always liked me more or less, and I think that my dear wife guessed it.
After she had kissed Annie and bid her a last good-bye, and the door had
closed, she spoke quite suddenly: "There goes your future wife, Frank,"
she said; "you should have married her at first instead of me; she is
very handsome and very good, and she has two thousand a year; _she_
would never have died of a nervous illness." And she laughed a little,
and then added:

"Oh, Frank dear, I wonder if you will think of me before you marry Annie
Guthrie. Wherever I am I shall be thinking of you."

And now that time which she foresaw has come, and Heaven knows that I
have thought of her, poor dear. Ah! those footsteps of one dead that
will echo through our lives, those woman's footprints on the marble
flooring which will not be stamped out. Most of us have heard and
seen them at some time or other, and I hear and see them very plainly
to-night. Poor dead wife, I wonder if there are any doors in the land
where you have gone through which you can creep out to look at me
to-night? I hope that there are none. Death must indeed be a hell if the
dead can see and feel and take measure of the forgetful faithlessness of
their beloved. Well, I will go to bed and try to get a little rest. I
am not so young or so strong as I was, and this wedding wears me out. I
wish that the whole thing were done or had never been begun.

What was that? It was not the wind, for it never makes that sound here,
and it was not the rain, since the rain has ceased its surging for a
moment; nor was it the howling of a dog, for I keep none. It was more
like the crying