“Will any one be at the beautiful gate, Waiting and watching for me?” Dear little ones, they did not know their mother was dying; but Beatrice did, and her tears fell like rain upon the pinched, white face pillowed on her arm, as she kissed the quivering lips, which whispered softly: “Darling Trix and Bunchie,—God bless them!—and tell Theo Mollie will be at the beautiful gate, waiting and watching for him, and for you all,—waiting and watching as they now wait and watch for me over there, the shining ones, crowding on the shore, and some are there to whom I first told the story of Jesus in the far-off heathen land. Tell Theo they are there, and many whom he led to the Saviour. It is no delusion, as some have thought. I see them, I see into Heaven, and it is so near; it lies right side by side with this world, only a step between.” Her mind was wandering a little, for her words became indistinct, until her voice ceased altogether, and Beatrice watched her as the last great struggle went on and the soul parted from the body, which was occasionally convulsed with pain, as if it were hard to sever the tie which bound together the mortal and immortal. At last, just as the beautiful southern sunset flooded the river and the fields beyond with golden and rosy hues, and the fresh evening breeze came stealing into the room, laden with the perfume of the orange and lemon blossoms it had kissed on its way, Mollie Morton passed from the world where she had known so much care to the life immortal, where the shining ones were waiting and watching for her. And far down the coast, threading in and out among the little islands and streams, came the boat which bore the Rev. Theodore Morton to the wife he hoped to find alive. Bee’s summons had found him busy with his people, with whom he was deservedly popular, and who bade him God-speed, and followed him with prayers for his own safety, and, if possible, the recovery of his wife, whom they had never seen. But this last was not to be, and when about noon the boat came up to its accustomed landing-place, and Bee stood on the wharf to meet him, he knew by one glance at her face that he had come too late. Everything which love could devise was done for the dead, on whose white face the husband’s tears fell fast when he first looked upon it, feeling, it may be, an inner consciousness of remorse as he remembered that all his heart had not been given to her. But he had been kind, and tender, and considerate, and he folded her children in his arms, and felt that in all the world there was nothing so dear to him as his motherless little ones.