manner
remained with me. I turned my eyes often during the evening upon her
pale, pure face, which seemed like a transparent veil through which the
spirit half revealed itself. How greatly she had changed in five years!
There had been trial and discipline; and she had come up from them
purer for the ordeal. The flesh had failed; but the spirit had taken on
strength and beauty.

"How did Mrs. Montgomery impress you?" said I to my wife, as we sat down
together on our return home.

"As one ready to be translated," she answered. "I was at a loss to
determine which was the most beautiful, she or Blanche."

"You cannot make a comparison between them as to beauty," I remarked.

"Not as to beauty in the same degree. The beauty of Blanche was queenly;
that of her mother angelic. All things lovely in nature were collated,
and expressed themselves in the younger as she stood blushing in the
ripeness of her charms; while all things lovely in the soul beamed forth
from the countenance of the elder. And so, as I have said, I was at a
loss to determine which was most beautiful."

I was just rising from my early breakfast on the next morning when I
received a hurried message from Ivy Cottage. The angel of Death had been
there. Tenderly and lovingly had he taken the hand of Mrs. Montgomery,
and led her through the gate that opens into the land of immortals.
She received her daughter's kiss at eleven o'clock, held her for some
moments, gazing into her face, and then said--"Good-night, my precious
one! Good-night, and God bless you!" At seven in the morning she was
found lying in bed with a smile on her face, but cold and lifeless as
marble! There had been no strife with the heavenly messenger.

CHAPTER XIX.

No;--there had been no strife with the heavenly messenger. As a child
falls asleep in its mother's arms, so fell Mrs. Montgomery asleep in the
arms of an angel--tranquil, peaceful, happy. I say happy--for in lapsing
away into that mortal sleep, of which our natural sleep is but an image,
shall the world-weary who have in trial and suffering grown heavenly
minded, sink into unconsciousness with less of tranquil delight than the
babe pillowed against its mother's bosom? I think not.

As I gazed upon her dead face, where the parting soul had left its sign
of peace, I prayed that, when I passed from my labors, there might be as
few stains of earth upon my garments.

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, Yea, saith