OW UNCLE LOVEDAY MADE A DISCOVERY; AND WHAT THE TIN BOX
CONTAINED.

An hour afterwards I was sitting at the bedside of my dying mother.
The shock of that terrible meeting had brought her understanding--and
death: for as her mind returned her life ebbed away. White and
placid she lay upon her last bed, and spoke no word; but in her eyes
could be read her death-warrant, and by me that which was yet more
full of anguish, a tender but unfading reproach. This world is full
of misunderstandings, but seldom is met one so desperate. How could
I tell her now? And how could she ever understand? It was all too
late. "Too late! too late!" the words haunted me there as the bright
sun struggled through the drawn blind and illumined her saintly face.
They and the look in her sweet eyes have haunted me many a day since
then, and would be with me yet, did I not believe she knows the truth
at last. There are too many ghosts in my memories for Heaven to
lightly add this one more.

She was dying--slowly and peacefully dying, and this was the end of
her waiting. He had returned at last, this husband for whose coming
she had watched so long. He had returned at last, after all his
labour, and had been laid at her feet a dead man. She was free to go
and join her love. To me, child as I was, this was sorely cruel.
Death, as I know now, is very merciful even when he seems most
merciless, but as I sat and watched the dear life slowly drift away
from me, it was a hard matter to understand.

The pale sunlight came, and flickered, and went; but she lay to all
seeming unchanged. Her pulse's beat was failing--failing; the broken
heart feebly struggling to its rest; but her sad eyes were still the
same, appealing, questioning, rebuking--all without hope of answer or
explanation. So were they when the sobbing fishermen lifted her from
the body, so would they be until closed for the last sleep. It was
very cruel.

My father's body lay in the room below, with Uncle Loveday and Mrs.
Busvargus for watchers. Now and again my uncle would steal softly
upstairs, and as softly return with hopelessness upon his face.
The clock downstairs gave the only sound I heard, as it marked the
footsteps of the dark angel coming nearer and nearer. Twice my
mother's lips parted as if to speak; but though I bent down to catch
her words, I could hear no sound.

So, as I sat and watched her waxen face, all the sweet memories of
her came back in a sad, repr