r lap as she went on.

"On the day of the funeral, she lay in the library, still and cold in
her coffin. I had gathered a few flowers, with which I was vainly
trying to cheat death into looking more like life, by placing them on
her bosom and in her stiffened fingers. Miss Eleanor sat at the foot of
the coffin, almost as motionless as the form within it. I had finished
my task and turned away, when the door opened and Mr. Lee came in
silently. A slight shudder went through him, as he came to the coffin
and bent over it. What a change had three days made in the man! Ten
years would not have taken so much youth and life from him and made him
look so old and wan. He looked upon her as a man who looks his last
upon what he loved best in the world;--his whole soul was in his eyes.

"I think he did not see Miss Eleanor till he was about to leave the
room. She had not spoken, and he was unconscious of her presence. He
turned towards her and held out his hand; his lips moved, but no words
escaped them. I heard Miss Purcill's low, unfaltering answer to his
unspoken thoughts. She did not take his proffered hand, but said,
'Nothing can unite us again, Thornton,--not even death.'

"His hand dropped by his side;--he quickly left the room, and never
came to Ashcroft again. When I went to take a last look of Miss
Elizabeth, I saw that the white rose which I had placed in her hand was
gone;--he had taken it."

Mrs. Bickford paused. Her story was ended. In a few minutes she took up
her sickle again, and Bradford stood leaning against the head-stone
till the grass was all cut on the grave. He had no more questions to
ask,--for the journal had told him more of the dead below, than Mrs.
Bickford, with all her love and sympathy, could do. She had fallen into
the well, then, while endeavoring to place the box on the stone. When
Mrs. Bickford's task was done, she walked silently back to Ashcroft
with Bradford.

Late in the evening he was alone in the library with his Aunt Eleanor.
The picture of Hagar, now so full of interest to him, still hung on the
wall, and the little desk was at the window which looked out upon the
lawn. Should he show the journal to his aunt, or keep it to himself?
Would Elizabeth Purcill wish her Cousin Eleanor to read her written
words as she once read her untold thoughts?

Wrapped up in his own musings, he started suddenly when Miss Purcill
said to him, "Rosamond tells me that you found a book to-day in the old