hite counterpane--the excitement of the last hour had been too
much for her weakened condition. She lay thus for several moments, and
then suddenly started from her recumbent position, and sat upright in
the bed. A glorious lustre broke through the mist that whelmed her
eyes, and a faint color sprung to her pallid cheek. She clasped her
daughter in her arms with an hysterical sob; looked wildly into her
face; pressed a burning, quivering kiss upon her forehead, and then
her lips gave forth fragments of speech, broken, but beautiful. But
this did not last long; a weakness came over her almost preternatural
strength; she loosened the embrace that circled her child; the color
fled her cheek, the brightness her eye; the death-rattle rung out
shrilly upon the air, and she fell back motionless to the bed. They
looked upon her countenance--a single glance was sufficient--it was
cold, calm, passionless--the seal of the grave was upon it.

* * * * *

The gloom of death had shadowed that cottage for two days, and now it
was desolate indeed. The stealthy tread of those who came to gaze upon
the dead and prepare its burial, no longer broke the solemn hush that
brooded over the dwelling. The departed was in truth the
departed--they had borne her over the threshold of her home, and laid
her remains in the narrow house where all must one day repose--a plain
head-board alone marking the grave in which slumbered what was once
Eliza Williams. Like others, she had died sincerely mourned by
many--like others, futurity would leave no memorial to tell that she
had ever existed. Decay, and rude hands, and careless feet, after the
lapse of years, would mar her last resting-place, as many in the
grave-yard had already been marred, but the form below could never
know nor feel the injury--she slept, and would sleep, as sleep the
dead, until the trump of Gabriel awakens and clothes the dry bones in
the habiliments of another world.

And now they were alone--the mother and her adopted daughter, making
preparations for a final departure from that desolate old homestead.
The ashes lay cold upon the hearth-stone, and a gloomy loneliness
reigned throughout the whole building, flinging a pall over the
feelings of Widow White. A chill crept over her as the large gray cat
came purring to her side, and rubbed his soft coat against her ankle;
and tears sprung to her eyes when she saw the countenance of the
little child wearing such a sad