To Dennis's great surprise, his mother's eyes opened wide, with the strange, far-off look they ever had when she was picturing to herself the unknown world. Her lips moved. He bent over her and caught the words: "Hark! hear!--It never was so sweet before. See the angels--thronging toward me--they never came so near before." Then a smile of joy and welcome lighted up her wan features, and she whispered, "Oh, Dennis, husband--are we once more united?" Suddenly there was a look of ecstasy such as her son had never seen on any human face, and she cried almost aloud, "Jesus--my Saviour!" and received, as it were, directly into His arms, she passed from earth. We touch briefly on the scenes that followed. Dennis took the body of his mother to her old home, and buried it under the wide-spreading elm in the village churchyard, where as a happy child and blooming maiden she had often sat between the services. It was his purpose to remove the remains of his father and place them by her side as soon as he could afford it. His little sisters accompanied him east, and he found a home for them with a sister of his mother, who was a good, kind, Christian lady. Dennis's salary was not large, but sufficient to insure that his sisters would be no burden to his aunt, who was in rather straitened circumstances. He also arranged that the small annuity should be paid for their benefit. It was hard parting from his sisters, whose little hearts seemed breaking at what appeared to them to be a new bereavement. "How can I leave them!" he exclaimed, with tears falling fast from his eyes. "They are children," said his aunt, soothingly, "and will forget their troubles in a few days." And so it proved; but Dennis, with a sore heart, and feeling very lonely, returned to Chicago. When at last Christine got out again, she learned from Ernst at the store that Dennis's mother had died, and that he had taken the remains and his sisters east. In his sorrow he seemed doubly interesting to her. "How I wish it were in my power to cheer and comfort him!" she sighed, "and yet I fear my ability to do this is less than that of any one else. In very truth he seems to despise and hate me now. The barriers between us grow stronger and higher every day. How different it all might have been if--. But what is the use of these wretched 'ifs'? What is the use of resisting this blind, remorseless fate that brings happiness to one and crushes another?" Wearily and despondingly she rode back to the elegant home in which she found so little enjoyment.