We should attempt in vain to describe the scene that followed. From the state of torpor produced by approaching death, the old man was suddenly awakened to all the pleasure of an actual reunion with her most dear to him on earth. Imagination itself will find difficulty in supplying the effect upon all, when, with hands upraised, and on her bended knees beside his couch of death, Alice thanked God in all the fervor of true piety, that she had returned in time to shed a ray of comfort upon the departing spirit of her aged father. Neither can any conception paint her feelings of bliss as she arose to be clasped again in the arms of him to whom she had pledged her virgin faith, and was bound by the holiest of earthly ties, or to meet the embrace of the daughter toward whom her soul had yearned so long in absence with all a mother’s tenderness. Suffice it to say, that love and affection, the first elements of her nature, and her great sustaining principles throughout all her trials here, found ample exercise in the full fruition of joy. We will not linger on the scene with minute detail, since no power of language we possess can convey the transcript as it should be. Pass we on then to the conclusion of our story. CHAPTER XIX. To sum the whole—the close of all. DEAN SWIFT. The morning of the next day dawned on few who had pressed their customary couches in the house of Henry Elmore, for the aged sufferer, on the night that intervened, had breathed his last beneath its roof. The body extended on the bed, exhibited, even in death, that mildness and serenity of expression that had characterized his face during the latter portion of his life. Sorrow could scarcely grieve that one who had outlived the full term of years allotted to man, and drank so deeply of earth’s cup of trial, should, at last, in a moment of unhoped for joy to cheer his exit from life, have finally departed; and Alice felt, as she kissed his cold brow, ere the coffin-lid had closed upon it forever, that her deepest feelings of filial affection could not inspire the wish within her to recall his departed spirit. Tears, many and heavy, it is true, were shed over him, but they fell rather for the sorrows he had passed, than because he was thus summoned in the fullness of time to a world where sorrow could never come.