He looked up, and saw a dim, violet cloud hanging horizontally over him. It was in shape like a human form; his own form. At that moment a great tremor, a sort of convulsive thrill, passed through him as he lay, jarring every nerve, and awaking him, at that supreme crisis, to the existence of his body. A sense of confusion followed; and then he seemed to pass out of his own head, and found himself poised in the air immediately over the place where he had just been lying. He saw the violet cloud no more, though whether he had coalesced with it, or the cloud itself had become disintegrated, he could not tell; then, by a sort of instinct, he assumed an erect position, and saw that he was balanced, somehow, a little distance from the bed, looking down upon it. And on the bed, connected with him by a faintly luminous cord, lay the white, still, beautiful form of a dead boy. "And that was my body!" he cried, in awestruck wonder, though his words caused no vibration in the air. He looked at himself, and saw that he was glorious, encircled by a radiant fire-mist. And he was throbbing and pulsating with life, able to move hither and thither without effort, free from lameness, free from weight, strong, vigorous, full of energy, poised like a bird in the pure air of heaven, ready to take his flight in any conceivable direction at the faintest motion of his own will. Then the resplendence that enveloped him extended, until the whole room was full of it; and in the midst of it there stood a very sweet and gracious figure, robed in white drapery, and with eyes of intensest love, more beautiful to look at than anything that Austin had ever dreamed of. "Mother!" he whispered, as he glided swiftly towards her. The walls and ceiling of the room dissolved, and a wonderful landscape, the pageantry and splendour of the Spirit Land, revealed itself. It was bathed in a light that never was on land or sea, and there were sunny slopes, and jewelled meadows, and silvery streams, and flowers that only grow in Paradise. Austin was dazzled with its glory; here at last was the realisation of all he had dimly fancied, all he had ever longed for. And yet as he floated outwards and upwards into the heavenly realms, the crown and climax of his happiness lay in the thought that he could always, by the mere impulse of desire, revisit the sweet old garden he had loved, and watch Lubin at his work among the flowers, and stand, though all unseen, beside the old stone fountain where he had passed such happy times in the earth-life he was leaving. Edinburgh M'laren and Co., Limited Printers