e than one hour. He turned the
hour-glass as he spoke. She had collected all the energies of life in
that parting interview,--nothing remained but a faint, fluttering,
quick-drawn breath.

I sat looking at the hour-glass, counting every gliding sand, till each
little, almost invisible particle, instead of dropping into the crystal
receptacle, seemed to fall on my naked heart like the mountain rock. O
my God! there are only two or three sands left, and my mother's life
hangs on the last sinking grain. Some one rises with noiseless steps to
turn the glass.

With a shriek that might have arrested the departing spirit, I sprang
forward and fell senseless on the floor.

I remember nothing that passed during the day. I was told afterwards,
that when I recovered from the fainting fit, the doctor, apprehensive of
spasms, gave me a powerful anodyne to quiet my tortured nerves. When I
became conscious of what was passing around me, the moon was shining on
the bed where I lay, and the shadow of the softly rustling leaves
quivering on the counterpane. I was alone, but I heard low, murmuring
voices in the next room, and there was a light there more dim and
earthly than the pale splendor that enveloped me. I leaned forward on my
elbow and looked beyond the open door. The plain white curtains of the
bed were looped up on each side, and the festoons swayed heavily in the
night air, which made the flame of the lamp dim and wavering. A form
reclined on the bed, but the face was _all covered_, though it was a
midsummer's night. As I looked, I remembered all, and I rose and glided
through the moonlight to the spot where my mother slept. Sustained by
unnatural excitement, I seemed borne on air, and as much separated from
the body as the spirit so lately divorced from that unbreathing clay; it
was the effect of the opiate I had taken, but the pale watchers in the
death-chamber shuddered at my unearthly appearance.

"Let there be no light here but light from heaven," said I,
extinguishing the fitful lamp-flame; and the room was immediately
illuminated with a white, ghostly lustre. Then kneeling by the bed, I
folded back the linen sheet, gazed with folded hands, and dry, dilated
eyes on the mystery of death. The moon, "that sun of the sleepless,"
that star of the mourner, shone full on her brow, and I smiled to see
how divinely fair, how placid, how angelic she looked. Her dark, shining
hair, the long dark lashes that pencilled her white c