"Do you really think that?" was the oft repeated question, and the troubled eyes would scan Clemence's face, till her own were filled with blinding drops. "I try so hard to be good and patient, but I can't hope for anything better. Something seems to stop me, when I try to pray to be made useful in this world, and it comes right out of my heart to ask, instead, only to let me die. Sometimes I have waited outside the graveyard, and watched a little spot under a shady tree, where no one ever goes, and I have thought how pleasant it would be to lie down there, with the daisies and violets to creep over me lovingly, and never wake again to any more pain. I don't think I would like to be happy, for you are not, dear Miss Graystone, and I don't think some people are ever made to be. I believe God means to make them feel how bad and wicked the world is, so they will want to leave it and go to Him. Don't you think He means that, when He tells us about there being no more sorrow nor crying in heaven? Oh, dear Miss Graystone, I know you sometimes feel just like that, for I have seen it in your eyes, and you look just as I have often dreamed my own dear mother did. And, don't be angry, but every night, when I say my prayer, I tell Him about you, and pray that you may be taken away from these wicked people, you and little Ruth. Last night I had a dream. I thought I stood upon the bank of a broad river, and the water moaned and whispered like human voices, and came up around me, and just as I was beginning to be afraid, a sweet, low voice came to me, borne across the waters, and mingled with their murmur, 'fear not,' and then I thought that I knew this was the river of death that you had told me about in the Sabbath School, and I clasped my hands together, and cried out for my dear, dear teacher, and then the water rose about me till, as it reached my lips, I awoke." "Poor, little one," said Clemence, parting the boy's hair from off his forehead, with a mother touch, and as she gazed down into the innocent eyes, with their far-off, dreamy look, a foreboding of the future came to her, that she put away with a shudder. "Come, children," she said, taking a hand of each, "we will retrace our steps homeward." She stooped and kissed the child's forehead, as she parted from him. "Good-bye, Johnny," she said cheerfully, "be a good boy, and try to remember all that I have told you." The child gave the required promise, and turned away, but came back a moment after: "Miss Graystone," he said, standing before her, and raising his eyes fearlessly to hers, "don't you think I have always tried to be good?" "Yes, Johnny," she answered truthfully, "I know that you do. You are a real little hero, and your patience and fortitude have often set me an example, while I have grieved over the melancholy circumstances that have made you so old in sorrow."