on the lifeless cheek.

"Oh! mamma, mamma," he sobbed, "what shall I do? what shall I do?"

And, sinking on the floor, he wept as though his heart would break.
Mrs Bromley and the farmer's wife were too much wrapt in their own
grief to stir to comfort him. So the three wept there together, in the
quiet little farm beside old Wilton church; while she, for whom they
wept, now henceforth knew no more sorrow, no more pain, nor any tears;
and still outside the birds sang on unwitting, and, from without, the
summer brightness mocked the darkness that was within--the darkness of
the valley of the shadow of death.

CHAPTER XI.

MOVING HOME.

School again--Leaving the farm--Like father, like son--Tea for two--The
doctor retires--Miss Parker's oration.

Clouds and sunshine, sunshine and clouds. So runs the world away.
Equally necessary, sorrow and gladness are as the rains and sunbeams
for the fruits of the earth. Were it all sadness the world would grow
morose and torpid; were it all gladness men would be selfish and
hard-hearted.

Four days had now elapsed since Mrs Campbell died; and it was the
evening of the funeral-day, a sad, rainy evening, and Harry was waiting
while Mrs Valentine packed his things, for that night he was to go to
the Grammar-School to sleep; to be there as a boarder, at any rate till
his father returned. He scarcely spoke a word, and what he did say
seemed to choke him. His mother dead; his father away at sea; himself
sent back to the school he had left but a few days since, smarting with
the pain of his undeserved punishment and accusation; his plight was
indeed a sad one. Mrs Valentine tried to cheer him as well as she
might, but she felt the blow that left Harry motherless too bitterly
herself to be of much comfort to him.

At half-past seven William appeared with a light cart of Dr Palmer's,
to take Harry and his luggage to school. Perhaps the bluntness of the
old butler was more opportune now than ever. It prevented the
lengthening of a parting that could not be otherwise than utterly sad
and wretched to Harry. There was the good kind Mrs Valentine to leave;
and the dear old farm, where he had spent so many joyous days in happy
ignorance of the blow which now had stricken him. And there was the
churchyard to say good-bye to, which now he could see but seldom, and
when he was near her grave, his mother did not seem to him to be so far
away.

But William was not unkindly bl