After holding the silent form close to her heart a moment, Cartice laid it gently on the bed, and the two mother hearts so sorely bereft stood silent but tearless beside it. * * * * * Later, when it was ready for its bed in the bosom of the earth, and again together they looked down at its white silence, Cartice said: “She shall know no evil thought; she shall do no evil deed; she shall tread no evil path. It is well with the child.” “Yes, in spite of my sore heart, it is well,” said the mother. “I surrender her not to death, but to a larger life, and shall not mourn. No matter what comes, she is safe. My darling’s safe--safe and dead. Since her father’s death I have been troubled at times with fears for her future. I face the inevitable--a few months more here, and then--the end. For the two boys I have arranged. They will have homes and care, but it would have tried my courage to leave this one ewe lamb.” “I would have been a mother to Isabel had you gone first,” said Mrs. Doring. “I am sure of that; but you, too, may not tarry here long. Why should we ever worry about the future? In spite of all our planning and troubling all is managed by a higher hand. We have only to do the work of the hour, leaving what the next may bring to be met when it comes, and not in anticipation. The present alone concerns us. By living it aright the future takes care of itself. It is the thought for to-morrow that so often makes to-day gloomy. I distressed myself about my child’s future, yet, see, all is well with her.” “I thank God for what I have learned of the mysterious event called death,” said Mrs. Doring. “Yet there are people who ask what good can come of knowing such things. What good? Is it nothing to know that the little image lying here is not our Isabel but her earthly investiture; that she is not dead nor separated from us; that her life is to go on from grace to grace, from strength to strength? Is it nothing to know that Socrates, Plato, Swedenborg, Shakespeare, Emerson, Hugo, Morse, Fulton, all who have given the world the light of genius, have never died, and that this baby is equal heir with them to a life of vaster opportunities and greater blessings?” “Others,” said Mrs. Benton, “wonder what good there is in the coming and going of so tiny a soul, who was here but for a day as it were. Yet her little life is as important in the divine plan as that of the greatest sage. She brought the gospel of pure love with her, and we are the better because of her brief visit to us--for it was but a pause on the great journey.” * * * * * On the evening after the discarded visible part of the child had been put out of sight, as Mrs. Doring was returning home from her friend’s house, two elderly men on the horse-car were talking of life, and their verdict was that they were tired of it.