“Charley’s testimony was more faintly spoken,—the boy had suffered much and was sinking rapidly,—but it was just as clear. “He’s coming for me, mother dear. Don’t cry, sweet mother. I’d like to stay with you if I could; but He knows best. He’s so good; and I am quite happy. You will be—happy—too.” “And so they died—both in one night—brave and steadfast and fearless, as young soldiers who have known something of the battle, even if their fighting days have been but brief. They were not unhappy or afraid. Dying for them was but leaving one happy home to find another—a far brighter one than this could ever be. “My wife was the next—she was only two days behind her boys; and her little girls so closely followed her that she could hardly have had time to miss them before she found them again in the everlasting home. For a very little while I hoped that my last little boy, the pet and darling of the house, was to be left to me. Each night, as I visited him in his sleep, and marked the bloom on his cheek and the healthy, natural slumber, I told myself that he would surely be spared me; but there came one morning when I saw, by the frightened and averted glances of my servants, that some new calamity had befallen me. I asked no question, but went straight up to the nursery. “There he lay in his little bed, white and still as marble; his little hands crossed upon his breast, and fair white flowers around him. He had been found dead in his bed in the morning, having evidently passed away in his sleep. The poison had done its work swiftly and well, and the child had not known one struggle or one pang. “They were all laid in the quiet churchyard within a week of each other. The sickness declined amongst us from that day; and only the many new mounds in the graveyard and the empty chairs around many hearths were left to tell the tale of that terrible time. “I was left alone in my home—quite alone; for in my despair I found that what I had taken to be my love of God and trust in Him was all an illusion, a shadow that vanished away the moment my prosperity was overthrown. God was showing me the true worth of those things in which I had put my trust. He was showing me that I had never known Him truly all my life long. I was not quick to learn the lesson He was teaching me. Trouble hardened my heart, and in my thoughts I reviled the God who had taken away all that made the happiness of my life and had left me alone in misery and darkness. For a long time I was very, very unhappy. “At last, in the days of my darkness and misery, God sent me a message of comfort. He sent it me by the hand of my dead wife—in a few words she had pencilled on the fly-leaf of her Bible, only a few hours before her death, and which it was months before I found courage to read.