"You always told me," said Christian to the pastor, "to take care not to love any people or things too much, because I should most likely have to leave them all very soon. But you see they have left me.--O, I do not mean my mother, and Gertrude, and Luc and Roselyn; but I have lost my pretty calf; and my tame heron has flown away; and my tulips,----that beautiful late-blower! There was not such a Bybloemen in all the district as the best of mine. When I bade it farewell for this year, and looked for the last time into its cup, with its white bottom, so beautifully broken with cherry, I did not think it would be rotting under the water so soon. I never saw such a cup as that flower had. I shall never see such another." The pastor shook his head. Christian, taking this for sympathy in his grief, went on, "And my calf had got to know me, and to let me do what I liked with him. He stood quite still to let me help to put on his jacket yesterday when the evening chill was coming on. I am glad I did not see him die, if he splashed in the water like one poor cow that I saw. I shall never love another calf. O, now I know why you shake your head so. You think that I should soon have left them, if they had not left me. Perhaps I may never get better than I am to-day; and to-day I cannot sit up at all. But, tell me one thing I want to know. Do you think animals live again? It seems very hard that my calf should die so soon, if it is not to live any more: and, if I am to die soon too----" "You would like to meet whatever you have loved," said the pastor, finishing his sentence for him. "I think God will give you beings to love wherever you are, Christian; because I think you cannot live without loving; and I am very sure that, wherever you are, there will be some to love you." Christian smiled, and said that people loved him now out of kindness, because they were sorry for his pain, and that he could not do what other children did: and he loved them because they were so good as not to mind the trouble he was always giving them. He was sure they would not forget him when he had ceased to be a trouble to any body; and perhaps he could do something for them when there should be an end of all pain, and when he might perhaps be as strong as the angel that stood between heaven and earth, and cried out so that the thunders answered him. This reminded Christian to tell how he now knew what the voices were like that came from under God's throne. Last night, he had learned what was the sound of many waters. Just when his pain came on, he thought these voices were calling for him. He seemed now disappointed that it had not been so. The pastor told him that it should be left to God to call him away in whispers or in thunders. His only care should be to hold himself ready to depart. CHAPTER VIII. NEWS AT HOME.