"But God is here! close to you, Allison," pleaded the rector; "asking
you even now to turn to Him, to look Him in the Face!"

Sally's breath came in fitful gasps; she looked round the room half
expecting the visible shining of that Presence. Instead, the wind
sobbed in the chimney and the rain dashed against the window-pane.
Death was here, and darkness; but no God, thought Sally.

The rector's hands covered his face, and through his fingers Sally saw
that great tears forced themselves in the agony of his wrestling for
that soul with God.

"You can please yourself," said Allison, opening his eyes again. "It
will do no good, but it won't do harm." And the rector, catching at
the feeble flicker of a dawning faith, said the twenty-third Psalm
slowly on his knees: "'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me----'"

A movement from the dying man made him pause and look up.

"I can't see nothing; give me a grip of your hand. Hold tight; I'm
mortal cold."

He did not speak again. Neighbours came and went, moistening the dying
lips with brandy; but the eyes had no gleam of recognition in them.
For an hour or more the rector sat with the great hand clasped tightly
between his own, repeating gently prayer or hymn, no word of which, he
feared, could reach the numbed brain, but certain that the Great God in
Heaven was looking down upon the sheep that had wandered so far from
Him, but whom He still claimed as His own. And Sally waited, too,
until the rector rising, bent and softly closed the eyes. Then she
knew that Allison was dead, and, slipping from the room, made her way
swiftly home, unconscious of the rain that beat upon her head, filled
only with the remembrance of the scene she had just witnessed.

"He's dead," she said, when Paul let her in; "he's dead--whatever that
may mean. It does not mean going out like a candle--I'm certain it
does not mean that,--it means going somewhere else; and, if any one can
teach me, I must find out where. I could not die like that, Paul; it's
despairing, it's quite hopeless! I'm thankful that I'm young; that I
have time to learn. If there's no hope, no light, the mere thought of
dying would be enough to drive one mad."

"My poor child! I did wrong to let you see anything so painful," Paul
said, gathering her into his arms. "I am afraid there is no one who
can tell you about these things. Nobody knows; that is the sad par