r mother said aroused her--"Cold,"
she was murmuring, "so cold. How you dreaded it too! You were always
delicate and suffering, yet you did more than the strongest men, for our
sakes. You never spared yourself. What you undertook to do, you did like
an honourable gentleman, neglecting nothing. You have died doing your
duty, as you wished to die. You have been dying all these months--and I
never suspected--I did not know--dying--killed by exposure--and
anxiety--and bad food. You came home hungry, and you could not eat what
I had to give you--cold, and I could not warm you--oh, the cruel, bitter
cold!"

Beth slipped up to her noiselessly.

"Mamma!"

Mrs. Caldwell started.

Beth held out the blankets--"to cover him."

Her mother caught her in her arms. "O my poor little child! my poor
little child!" she cried; and then at last she burst into tears.

* * * * *

During the days that preceded her father's funeral, Beth did not miss
him. It was as if he were somewhere else, that was all--away in the
mountains--and was himself thinking, as Beth did continually, about the
still, cold, smiling figure that reposed, serenely indifferent to them
all, in his room upstairs. One day, what he had said about being laid
out by old women came into her head, and she wondered what he would have
looked like when they laid him out that he should have objected so
strongly to their seeing him. She was near the death-chamber at the
moment, and went in. No one was there, and she stood a long time looking
at the figure on the bed. It was entirely covered, but she had only to
lift the sheet and learn the secret. She turned it back from the placid
face, then stopped, and whispered half in awe, half in interrogation,
"Papa!" As she pronounced the word, the inhuman impulse passed and was
forgotten.

Hours later, Mrs. Ellis found her sitting beside him as she had so
often done during his illness, on that same chair which was too high
for her, her feet dangling, and her little hands folded in her lap,
gazing at him with a face as placidly set, save for the eyes, as his
own.

The next day they had all to bid him the long farewell. Mrs. Caldwell
stood looking down upon him, not wiping the great tears that welled up
painfully into her eyes, lest in the act she should blot out the dear
image and so lose sight of it for one last precious moment. She was an
undemonstrative woman, but the lingering way in which she tou