'But she shall never strike me many times more,' continued Charley, with suppressed indignation. After a pause, during which, with compressed lip and clouded brow, he had been resentfully dwelling upon the pain and humiliation consequent upon the blows he had received: 'Never! never! for I don't care if it _is_ wrong, if pa _does_ tell me not to do it, I don't care if she is my mother; after I get just a little bigger, when she strikes me, I'm going to strike back again.' These vengeful threats exciting no answering comments from his brother, Charley turned to look at him. A strange prophetic chill swept across the intuitional soul, and filled it with vague, shuddering apprehension. 'Harry, don't look that way; Harry, come back to yourself! Oh, Harry! take your eyes from the sky and look at me. You frighten me so!' cried Charley, in a voice tremulous with agitation. The consciousness of his surroundings had dawned so slowly on the rapt soul, the patient face had turned toward his brother's so calmly, he was so meek and quiet, so undemonstrative usually, that he was totally unprepared for the wild burst of passionate weeping with which Harry threw himself upon his neck. 'Oh! Charley, Charley, I cannot find it, I cannot see the land you talk of. I know it must be there, where the sky is clear and the sun is shining; but I've been looking, and I can't see it anywhere. Oh! Charley, where is it? Where is the place up yonder where they are good and happy? Show me the way there, show me the way. I don't want to stay _here_,' sobbed Harry, coming back to his own hopeless self again; 'I want to go somewhere where folks don't have to be lonesome all the time; I don't know what dying is, but if dying will do it, I want dying to take me there.' He had drawn his brother toward him, wiped his tears away with his own little apron, and soothed him as well as his agitation would permit, striving, amid the tumult of his thoughts, to gather up such meagre scraps of information as he had gleaned upon the subject, and put it into intelligible words, when, from a window almost hidden by the leaves of the tree under which they were sitting, they heard a voice calling to them, a familiar voice, but with a new tone in it, which quickens their pulse-beat, and makes their hearts throb with a sweet joy. Dimly visible through the foliage, a familiar face is looking down upon them, loving and tender as any mother's face should be; and with that look, the strong instinctive love for her which nature had implanted in their hearts awoke in all its strength. Pride, anger, sorrow, were all alike forgotten. To her loving call there came from eager lips the ready response: 'Yes, mamma; we are coming, dear mamma.'