well as her affection--he, who had never willfully given her a moment's pain--and though his irrepressive sighs and suffocating sobs she would have hushed, at the expense of all that remained of life to her--there was still a music in them to her dying ear, that told of love that would not forget, that would twine in perennial garlands round her grave. Poor little Helen, as she looked at her pale, agonized face, and saw the _terror_ imprinted there, she remembered what she had once said to Miss Thusa, of being after death an object of _terror_ to her child, and she felt a sting that no language could express. She longed to stretch out her feeble arms, to fold them round this child of her prayers and fears, to carry her with her down the dark valley her feet were treading, to save her from trials a nature like hers was so ill-fitted to sustain. She looked from her to Mittie, the cold, insensible Mittie, whose large, black eyes, serious, but not sad, were riveted upon her through the white fringe of the curtain, and another sting sharper still went through her heart. "Oh! my child," she would have said, could her thoughts have found utterance, "forget me if you will--mourn not for me, the mother who bore you--but be kind, be loving to your little sister, more young and helpless than yourself. You are strong and fearless--she is a timid, trembling, clinging dove. Oh! be gentle to her, for my sake, gentle as I have ever been to you. And you, too, my child, the time will come when you will _feel_, when your heart will awake from its sleep--and if you only feel for yourself, you will be wretched." "Why art thou cast down, oh! my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?" were the meditations of the dying woman, when turning from earth, she raised her soul on high. "I leave my children in the hands of a heavenly Father, as well as a mighty God--in the care of Him who died that man might live forevermore."