d whilst she took the first step in the surging sea of
river. Yes, she died alone,--"in the heart of the night," Dr. Eaton said
it must have been "that the bridegroom came." Had she oil in her lamp?
What was she like? Like her son Abraham, or her daughter Lettie? I tried
to paint her face as it must have been. It is darker still in that grave
where she lies than was the night wherein she died. Miss Lettie was
right: they have a fathom of earth over her,--there's not one glimmer of
light down there. When I am buried, won't _some one_ shut in one little
sun-ray with me, that I may see to feel the gloom?

I looked down upon the gravelly earth lying above her, as I had looked
across at it when I left the parsonage at night fall, and passed by the
church-yard. All the while, my eyes were in the depths of the fire. I
went down through stone and soil to the coffin there. All was
unutterable blackness. I put out my hand to feel. It was a cold,
marbleized face that my warm, living fingers wandered over. I touched
the forehead: it was very stony, granite-like,--not a woman's forehead.
The eyes were large,--I felt them under the half-closed lids. The
mouth--Yes, Miss Lettie was right. Love for Abraham had covered up this
mother-love for her. And confession unto her dead was, it must have
been, better than unto her living. The answer would have been much the
same.

Shudderingly, I picked up my hand, the one that had been lying upon the
arm of the chair, whilst its life and spirit had gone out on their
mission of discovery. It was very cold. I warmed it before the fire, and
began to think that Aaron was right,--this House of Axtell was stealing
away my proper self, or, at least, this hand of mine had been unlawfully
employed, through occasion of them. As the warmth of burning coals
revivified my hand, I saw something in the fire,--a face,--the very one
these live fingers had just been tracing in yonder church-yard. Its eyes
were open now,--large, luminous, earnest, with a wave of solid pride
sweeping on through the irides and almost overwhelming the pupils. The
mouth,--oh, those lips! _ever uttered they a prayer_? They look,
trembling the while, so unutterably unforgiving! When they come to stand
before the I AM, will they _ever_ plead? It is hard to think the Deity
maketh such souls. Doth He? I looked a little farther on in the fiery
group. Other forms of coal took the human face. I saw two. Whose were
they? One was like unto my m