e carrier doves, with memories beneath their
wings.

"When will father come home?"

And the question was asked again and again, till the little lips and heart
of Bell grew weary. Then she folded her hands, and said:

"He will never come!"

Her blue eyes became more dreamy, and her slight form--so very
slight--glided about the house. She would listen to the sea. Once she said,
"Never more!" and the sea repeated it with a human voice. In the still
night she asked,--

"When will father come home?"

"Never more," said the sea--and she heard it through the open
window--"Never more!"

She waited, and the months went by.

Was the child Bell the only one in this world waiting?

Who has not some hope at sea? Who has not waited, and watched, and grown
weary?

Who has not a question in his heart, to which a low spirit-voice replies:

"Never more!"

III.

_I saw our little Gertrude die:
She left off breathing, and no more
I smoothed the pillow beneath her head.
She was more beautiful than before,
Like violets faded were her eyes;
By this we knew that she was dead!
Through the open window looked the skies
Into the chamber where she lay,
And the wind was like the sound of wings,
As if Angels came to bear her away._

THE GOLDEN LEGEND.

III.

SOUL-LAND.

_Autumn and Winter--By the Fireside--Where little Bell is going--Nanny
sings about Cloe--Bell reads a Poem--The flight of an Angel--The
Funeral--The good Parson--The two Grave-stones._

It was autumn. The wind, with its chilly fingers, picked off the sere
leaves, and made mounds of them in the garden walks. The boom of the sea
was heavier, and the pale moon fell oftener on stormy waves than in the
summer months. Change and decay had come over the face of Earth even as
they come over the features of one dead. In woods and hollow places vines
lay rotting, and venturesome buds that dared to bloom on the hem of winter;
and the winds made wail over the graves of last year's flowers.

Then Winter came--Winter, with its beard of snow--Winter, with its frosty
breath and icy fingers, turning everything to pearl. The wind whistled odd
tunes down the chimney; the plum-tree brushed against the house, and the
hail played a merry tattoo on the window-glass. How the logs blazed in the
sitting room!

Bell did not leave her room _now_.

Her fairy foot-steps were never heard tripping, nor her voi