and the disconsolate mother
sat with her young daughters. She looked at them, but she saw them
not; for her thoughts were far away from the domestic hearth. She gave
herself up to her grief, and it 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, wearisome pain.
With tearful 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 comforting words could they speak,
when they were themselves so full of grief? It seemed as if she
would never again know sleep, and yet it would have been her best
friend, one who would have strengthened her body and poured peace into
her soul. They at last persuaded her to lie down, and then she would
lie as still as if she slept.

One night, when her husband listened, as he often did, to her
breathing, he quite believed that she had at length found rest and
relief in sleep. He folded his arms and prayed, and soon sunk
himself into healthful sleep; therefore he did not notice that his
wife arose, threw on her clothes, and glided silently from the
house, to go where her thoughts constantly lingered--to the grave of
her child. She passed through the garden, to a path across a field
that led to the churchyard. No one saw her as she walked, nor did
she see any one; for her eyes were fixed upon the one object of her
wanderings. It was a lovely starlight night in the beginning of
September, and the air was mild and still. She entered the
churchyard, and stood by the little grave, which looked like a large
nosegay of fragrant flowers. She sat down, and bent her head low over
the grave, as if she could see her child through the earth that
covered him--her little boy, whose smile was so vividly before her,
and the gentle expression of whose eyes, even on his sick-bed, she
could not forget. How full of meaning that glance had been, as she
leaned over him, holding in hers the pale hand which he had no longer
strength to raise! As she had sat by his little cot, so now she sat
by his grave; and here she could weep freely, and her tears fell upon
it.

"Thou wouldst gladly go down and be with thy child," said a
voice quite close to her,--a voice that sounded so deep and clear,
that it went to her heart.

She looked up, and by her side stood a man wrapped in a black
cloak, with a hood closely drawn over his