Mr. Mosier, when he heard the sobs of his wife, arose, and clasping his hands over Malina’s head, silently besought a blessing on her. She drew back, and he saw that her face was still calm; so taking her hands in his, he began to persuade and reason with her. She listened, and gazed earnestly in his face as he spoke. At last, tears started to her eyes, and when the old man saw this, big drops began to stream down his own cheek, and the clasp of his hand grew tremulous, as he led her from the room. As the old man placed Malina in her saddle, he glanced in her face, and a misgiving came to his heart. He questioned himself if it was safe to trust her to the road without protection; but when he proposed accompanying her part of the way, at least, she pleaded against it with startling eagerness, and, thinking of his afflicted wife, he allowed her to depart. Malina had a secret wish at her heart, which caused it to pant for solitude. Her road lay close by the grave-yard where our young minister was buried, and she yearned to stand once more by his death place, and alone. When she reached the sacred place, she looked to the right and left, timidly, as if her errand had been a wrong one. Her nerves were strung to their utmost tension, and she was morbidly fearful of being seen—every thing was solitary and quiet; the long grass bending to the breeze, as it sighed over the graves, and the soft rustling sound which whispered amid the leaves of a clump of weeping willows, that curtained an entire household that had gone down to sleep together, were all the sounds that fell upon her ear. She tied the horse to the fence, and passing forward to _his_ grave, sat upon a pile of sods that had been left by the sexton. She neither wept nor moved—but there she remained in the bright sunshine, gazing hour after hour on a tuft of tiny white blossoms, which sprung up from a sod which they had placed just over his heart. Now and then, she twined her hands together as they reposed in her lap—and as the sunshine went suddenly away, and heavy black clouds rolled over the sky, with the lightning playing amid their ragged folds, she smiled, and drew closer to the grave. At last, a roar of thunder burst from the clouds, big drops of rain came down upon the graves, and bent the willows more droopingly to the earth. Malina lifted her eyes upward with a wild and startled look, then turning them on the willows which sheltered that single family, and on the congregation of graves which lay around her, all covered with long grass, she rested them on the mound at her feet, murmuring— “Have all a covering from the cold rain, but thee?” As she spoke, Malina took off her shawl, and spreading it over the newly made grave, cast herself upon it, and for the first time since she felt his heart stop beating beneath hers, moaned and sobbed as if her very life were going from her.