f God had grown
strong within me--in humbleness I bowed to his awful will--with a sincere
trust I relied upon the goodness, the wisdom, and the mercy of him who
had sent this great affliction. But a further incident connected with
this very calamity was to test this trust and patience to the uttermost.

It was still early when I returned, having completed the last sad office.
My wife, as I afterwards learned, still lay weeping upon her bed. But
somebody awaited my return in the hall, and opened the door, anticipating
my knock. This person was our lodger.

I was too much appalled by the sudden presentation of this abhorred
spectre even to retreat, as my instinct would have directed, through the
open door.

"I have been expecting your return," he said, "with the design of saying
something which it might have profited you to learn, but now I apprehend
it is too late. What a pity you are so violent and impatient; you would
not have heard me, in all probability, this morning. You cannot think
how cross-grained and intemperate you have grown since you became a
saint--but that is your affair, not mine. You have buried your little
daughter this morning. It requires a good deal of that new attribute of
yours, _faith_, which judges all things by a rule of contraries, and can
never see anything but kindness in the worst afflictions which malignity
could devise, to discover benignity and mercy in the torturing calamity
which has just punished you and your wife for _nothing_! But I fancy
that it will be harder still when I tell you what I more than
suspect--ha, ha. It would be really ridiculous, if it were not
heart-rending; that your little girl has been actually buried _alive_;
do you comprehend me?--alive. For, upon my life, I fancy she was not
dead as she lay in her coffin."

I knew the wretch was exulting in the fresh anguish he had just
inflicted. I know not how it was, but any announcement of _disaster_ from
his lips, seemed to me to be necessarily true. Half-stifled with the
dreadful emotions he had raised, palpitating between hope and terror, I
rushed frantically back again, the way I had just come, running as fast
as my speed could carry me, toward the, alas! distant burial-ground where
my darling lay.

I stopped a cab slowly returning to town, at the corner of the lane,
sprang into it, directed the man to drive to the church of ----, and
promised him anything and everything for despatch. The man seemed amazed;
doubt