Meantime an impressive scene was being enacted between her brother and her grandfather. Alfred went behind the screen, and uncovered the face of his mother. It was hard and cold in death, as it had been hard and cold in life. The light of love had not illumined her latter days, and strength had not been given her to fight with grief. Alfred was awed into good resolution as he looked at the dumb inanimate clay. "I won't drink so much," he thought, "I'll try and be better. If Christopher Sly wins the Northumberland Plate, I shall be able to be better." And then a strange half-prayer dwelt in his mind, that Christopher Sly might win the race. To his side came old Wheels. "She looks like an old woman," he said; "almost too old to be my daughter." Alfred turned his eyes to the old man's face. Youth had not departed from it; it seemed indeed younger than the face of his dead daughter. "You were her first-born, Alfred. Think of the joy that filled her when she first pressed you in her arms, and look at her now. Time is but a breath--but a breath--but a breath!" Old Wheels mused of the time gone by, and wondered, as we all must wonder when we think of them and now, and of the changes that have occurred in our lives. The gay spirit chilled; the cheerful heart dulled by long suffering; the hope that made life bright dead and cold long, long ago--killed in the battle we have fought! But if love be left!---- Ay, if love be left, all the bruises we have received in the fight, all the hurts and wounds, shall not make life despairing. The flowers we have gathered and held to our hearts shall never wither if love be left! "She looks very peaceful, grandfather," said Alfred almost in a whisper. "She _is_ at peace; she is with God and nature." Better influences were stirred into action by the old man's words, and Alfred sank upon his knees by the bedside, and perhaps loved her better at that moment than ever he had done before. "I have heard," continued the old man, "that many faces in death assume the beauty they possessed in youth. I would give much that it had been so with your mother, and that you might have seen her face as it was when she was young." The old man's thoughts travelled back to the time when he first looked upon the baby-face of the cold hard grey form before him. He recalled the thrills of pleasure that hurried through him as he held the pretty child in his arms, and looked at his wife smiling happily in bed. His wife had died soon after the birth of this their only child, who had been a comfort to him until trouble came. It was all over now, and a new life had commenced for her. "I have thought sometimes," he said aloud, pursuing the commentary of his thoughts, "of the strangeness of spirits meeting under certain conditions of things." Alfred looked up in wonder, and the old man answered the look.