While the household slumbered a pale messenger entered silently and said to one of its members, "This night thy soul is required of thee! Come with me." Mr. Laurence was found dead in his bed in the morning, a smile, warmer than his living features had worn for years, frozen upon his lips. For those who have witnessed the ghastly spectacle of a modern funeral, no description of that barbarous rite is necessary. Who has not seen it all--the darkened room, stifling with its mingled odors of flowers and disinfectants; the sombre, hideous casket; the awful ceremony of screwing down the lid over the beloved face: the black army of pall-bearers: the long, slow, mournful journey to the desolate, disease-breeding cemetery; the damp, dark, yawning pit, the lowered coffin, the sickening thud of the earth as dust returns to dust. Oh! could the most savage race invest death with more terrors than this frightful custom of the civilized world? Then follows the long process of decay, the darkness, the gloom, the weight of the earth upon that dear breast, the grave-worm slowly eating his slimy way into the flesh which has thrilled under our warm kisses--God! are we not cruel to our dead? Compare with this the beautiful ceremony of cremation. A snowy cloth envelopes the dead. A door swings open noiselessly, and the iron cradle, with its burden clothed as for the nuptial bed, rolls through the aperture and disappears in a glory of crimson light, as a dove sails into the summer sunset skies and is lost to view. There is no smoke, no flame, no odor of any kind. Nothing comes in contact with the precious form we have loved, but the purity of intense heat, and the splendor of great light. In a few hours, swiftly, noiselessly, with no repulsive or ghastly features in the process, the earthly part of our dear one is reduced to a small heap of snowy ashes. All hail the dawn of a newer and higher civilization, which shall substitute the cleanliness and simplicity of cremation for the complicated and dreadful horrors of burial! By Mr. Laurence's will it was discovered that his entire property, amounting to a comfortable competence, belonged to Dolores, with the exception of the homestead: This was to pass into the hands of Dr. Monroe, his family physician and only intimate acquaintance. Friends offered the shelter of their homes to Dolores, and urged her to accept their sympathetic hospitality until her future plans were formed. But the sorrowing orphan refused to leave the thrice gloomy house. She clung to Helena, and said, between her sobs, "They tell me I must go away from here soon, forever: that it is no longer my home. Surely, I may remain a little while--a few weeks, and surely you will stay with me, Helena? I cannot leave it all so suddenly--it is too much to ask of me."