In a few moments the garments of our poor mourner were saturated with rain—still she clung closer to the grave, murmuring words of wild endearment to the unconscious inmate, and congratulating herself, with strange earnestness, that she was still able to shield his bosom from the storm. At last, the clouds rolled away, and though the sun was just going down, his last fires kindled a rainbow amid the water drops that yet filled the air. Malina lifted her head, and gazed upward—a smile parted her lips when she saw the rainbow, and pressing her cheek upon the grave again, she whispered— “The angels have built thee a bridge, love!” The sun went down, and Malina arose from the grave, shivering from head to foot. She gazed around, and was turning her eyes with a wistful look on her late resting place, as if she meditated casting herself down again, when a low neigh from the horse which still remained by the fence, aroused her, and leaving the shawl behind, she hurried toward the patient animal, and mounting him, rode away. Malina must have wandered from the usual road, in the strange abstraction of her mind, for it was midnight when she came opposite the old meeting-house. Prompted, doubtless, by some vague fear of returning home, or perhaps allured to pause by the open gate, the weary and half bewildered girl turned her horse, and riding close to the front door of the parsonage house, dismounted, and allowed him to wander amid the flower beds and rose bushes which filled the yard. Thrusting her hand beneath the door sill, she took out a key, and fitted it to the lock, but with difficulty, for her hands trembled; and though hot flushes every moment darted through her frame, she was shivering with cold. She went up stairs, holding feebly by the balusters, and guided by the moonlight, which fell from a window overhead, she entered a room—that which she had decorated as the bridal chamber of her sister Phebe, and of the departed. A clear moonlight came through the windows, and lay like flags of silver amid the black shadows which filled the apartment. Every thing was still and motionless; not a breath stirred the bridal ribands with which the muslin curtains were looped back. The bed lay with the moonlight sleeping amid its pillows, like a snow drift, when the air is calm; and the atmosphere was impregnated by the dead flowers which had been profusely lavished on the toilet, and now hung crisp and withered in their vases. Malina was very ill, and a fever burned through her veins—her limbs were almost powerless, and her forehead seemed girdled with iron. Still was she sensible of surrounding things, and her heart swelled with the recollections which thronged on her aching brain. She unfastened her damp dress, and with difficulty crept into bed.