"My darling!" he said, tenderly. "I am sent to thee with heavy tidings." Poor Beatrice laid her tired head on her father's breast, with the feeling that she had one friend left in the world. "I know it, dear Father. But it is such a comfort that you feel it with me." "There are not many who will, I can guess," answered Bruno. "But, my child, I am afraid thou dost not know all." "Father!--what is it?" asked Beatrice, fearfully. "One has fallen in that massacre, very dear to thee and me, my daughter." "Delecresse?" She thought him the most likely to be in London of any of the family. "No. Delecresse is safe, so far as I know." "Is it Uncle Moss?--or Levi my cousin?" "Beatrice, it is Abraham the son of Ursel, the father of us all." The low cry of utter desolation which broke from the girl's lips was pitiful to hear. "`My father, my father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!'" Bruno let her weep passionately, until the first burst of grief was over. Then he said, gently, "Be comforted, my Beatrice. I believe that he sleeps in Jesus, and that God shall bring him with Him." "He was not baptised?" asked Beatrice, in some surprise that Bruno should think so. "He was ready for it. He had spoken to a friend of mine--one Friar Saher de Kilvingholme--on the subject. And the Lord would not refuse to receive him because his brow had not been touched by water, when He had baptised him with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Perhaps scarcely any priest then living, Bruno excepted, would have ventured so far as to say that. "Oh, this is a weary world!" sighed Beatrice, drearily. "It is not the only one," replied her father. "It seems as if we were born only to die!" "Nay, my child. We were born to live for ever. Those have death who choose it." "A great many seem to choose it." "A great many," said Bruno, sadly. "Father," said Beatrice, after a short silence, "as a man grows older and wiser, do you think that he comes to understand any better the reason of the dark doings of Providence? Can you see any light upon them, which you did not of old?" "No, my child, I think not," was Bruno's answer. "If any thing, I should say they grow darker. But we learn to trust, Beatrice. It is not less dark when the child puts his hand confidingly in that of his father; but his mind is the lighter for it. We come to know our Father better; we learn to trust and wait. `What I do, thou knowest not now: but thou shalt know hereafter.' And He has told us that in that land where we are to know even as we are known, we shall be satisfied. Satisfied with His dealings, then: let us be satisfied with Him, here and now." "It is dark!" said Beatrice, with a sob. "`The morning cometh,'" replied Bruno. "And `in the morning is gladness.'" Beatrice stood still and silent for some minutes, only a slight sob now and then showing the storm through which she had passed. At last, in a low, troubled voice, she said--