The darkened room, the stilly tread, the muffled knocker and slowly closing door, announced the presence of that kingly guest, who presides over the empire of _terror_ and the grave. The long-expected hour was arrived, and Mrs. Gleason lay supported by pillows, whose soft down would never more sink under the pressure of her weary head. The wasting fires of consumption had burned and burned, till nothing but the ashes of life were left, save a few smouldering embers, from which flashed occasionally a transient spark. Mr. Gleason sat at the bed's head, with that grave, stern, yet bitter grief on his countenance which bids defiance to tears. She had been a gentle and devoted wife, and her quiet, home-born virtues, not always fully appreciated, rose before his remembrance, like the angels in Jacob's dream, climbing up to Heaven. Louis stood behind him, his head bowed upon his shoulder, sobbing as if his heart would break. Helen was nestled in her father's arms, with the most profound and unutterable expression of grief and awe and dread, on her young face. She was told that her mother was dying, going away from her, never to return, and the anguish this conviction imparted would have found vent in shrieks, had not the awe with which she beheld the cold, gray shadows of death, slowly, solemnly rolling over the face she loved best on earth, the face which had always seemed to her the perfection of mortal beauty, paralyzed her tongue, and frozen the fountain of her tears. Mittie stood at the foot of the bed, looking at her mother through the opening of the curtain, partly veiled by the long, white fringe that hung heavily from the folds, and which the wind blew to and fro, with something like the sweep of the willow. The windows were all open to admit the air to the faintly heaving lungs of the sufferer, and gradually one curtain after another was lifted, as the struggle for breath and air increased, and the light of departing day streamed in on the sunken and altered features it was never more to illuminate. Mittie was awe struck, but she manifested no tenderness or sensibility. It was astonishing how so young a child could see _anyone_ die, and above all a _mother_--a mother, so kind and affectionate, with so little emotion. She was far more oppressed by the realization of her own mortality, for the first time pressed home upon her, than by her impending bereavement. What were the feelings of that speechless, expiring, but fully conscious mother, as she gazed earnestly, wistfully, thrillingly on the group that surrounded her? There was the husband, whom she had so much loved, he, who often, when weary with business, and perplexed with anxiety, had seemed careless and indifferent, but who, as life waned away, had shown the tenderness of love's early day, and who she knew would mourn her deeply and _long_. There was her noble, handsome, warm-hearted, high-souled boy--the object of her pride, as