ning on every side.

Uncle Leverett took a hard cold early in the new year. He was indoors
several days, then some business difficulties seemed to demand his
attention and he went out again. A fever set in, and though at first it
did not appear serious, after a week the doctor began to look very
grave. Betty stopped her preparations and wrote a rather apprehensive
letter to Mrs. King.

One day Uncle Win was sent for, and remained all the afternoon and
evening. The next morning he went down to the store.

"I'm afraid father's worse," said Warren. "His fever was very high
through the night, and he was flighty, and now he seems to be in a sort
of stupor, with a very feeble pulse. Oh, Uncle Win, I haven't once
thought of his dying, and now I am awfully afraid. Business is in such a
dreadful way. That has worried him."

Mr. Adams went up to Sudbury Street at once. The doctor was there.

"There has been a great change since yesterday," he said gravely. "We
must prepare for the worst. It has taken me by surprise, for he bid fair
to pull through."

Alas, the fears were only too true! By night they had all given up hope
and watched tearfully for the next twenty-four hours, when the kindly,
upright life that had blessed so many went to its own reward.

To Doris is seemed incredible. That poor Miss Henrietta Maria should
slip out of life was only a release, and that Miss Arabella in the
ripeness of age should follow had awakened in her heart no real sorrow,
but a gentle sense of their having gained something in another world.
But Uncle Leverett had so much here, so many to love him and to need
him.

Death, the mystery to all of us, is doubly so to the young. When Doris
looked on Uncle Leverett's placid face she was very sure he could not be
really gone, but mysteriously asleep.

Yes, little Doris--the active, loving, thinking man had "fallen on
sleep," and the soul had gone to its reward.

Foster Leverett had been very much respected, and there were many
friends to follow him to his grave in the old Granary burying ground,
where the Fosters and Leveretts rested from their labors. There on the
walk stood the noble row of elms that Captain Adino Paddock had imported
from England a dozen years before the Revolutionary War broke out, in
their very pride of strength and grandeur now, even if they were
leafless.

It seemed very hard and cruel to leave him here in the bleakness of
midwinter, Doris thought. And he was not re