armer than I thought it would be that such a heavy coat is a nuisance."

"All right," responded the toll-keeper. "Here! John Jay," he ordered, as
the doctor disappeared around the bend in the road, "pick up the
gentleman's coat and hang it on a chair inside the door there." Then he
stuck his hands in his pockets, and whistling to his dog, walked off
across the fields.

George turned to the child again. "John Jay," he said, "do you know that
I'm going away soon?" Without waiting for an answer, he hurried on, lest
another spell of coughing should interrupt him. "When I was a little
fellow like you I heard so much about spirits and graveyards and haunted
places that I had a horror of dying. I could not think of it without a
shiver. But I've found out that death isn't a cold, ugly thing, my boy,
and I want you to remember all your life every word I'm saying to you
now. There is nothing to dread in simply going down this road and
through the gate as Doctor Leonard did, and death is no more than that.
We just go down the turnpike till we get to the end of this life, and
then there's the toll-gate. We lay down our old worn-out bodies, just as
Doctor Leonard left his coat here, because he wouldn't need it farther
up the road. Then the bar flies up and lets us through. It drops so
quickly that no one ever sees what lies on the other side, but we know
that there is neither sorrow nor crying beyond it, nor any more pain.
Listen, John Jay, this is what the Book tells us."

With fingers that trembled in his eagerness to make himself understood,
he lifted the volume that had been lying in his lap. The words that he
read vibrated through the child's heart in the way that the organ music
used to roll. Never again in the years that followed could he hear them
read without seeing all the golden glory of that radiant October day,
and hearing the mournful notes of some distant dove, falling at
intervals through the Sabbath-like stillness.

He had a queer conception of what lies beyond the gates of this life. It
was a curious jumble of crowns and harps and long, white-feathered
wings. Mammy's favorite song said, "There's milk an' honey in heaven, I
know;" and Aunt Susan often lifted up her cracked voice in the refrain,
"Oh, them golden slippahs I'm agwine to wear, when Gabriel blows his
trum-pet!" How Uncle Billy could sigh for the time to come when he might
walk the shining pavements was beyond John Jay's understanding.
Personally, he p