Oh, how vividly I recalled the past, remembering with anguish the harsh words I had uttered when last I saw him. It was true I had once written, imploring pardon for my fault, and Lizzie, who answered my letter, had said “Father bade me say that you were freely forgiven;” but still I felt that I could not let him die until I had heard my forgiveness from his own lips. It was impossible for Anna to accompany me, and, as William would not leave her, I started alone, my heart filled with many dark forebodings, lest I should be too late. CHAPTER XIX. THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS. All around the house was still; while within, the children and the neighbors trod softly as they went from room to room, and their faces wore an anxious, troubled look, as if they already felt the presence of the _shadow_ hovering near. The heavy brass knocker was muffled, and the deep-toned churchbell across the way no longer told the hours of 12 and 9, for at each stroke the sick man had turned upon his pillow, and moaned as if in pain. So when the Sabbath came the people went up unsummoned to the house of God, where they reverently prayed for him, who was passing from their midst, and who, ere another week rolled round, would be “where congregations ne’er break up, and Sabbaths never end.” For many days he had lain in a kind of stupor from which nothing roused him save the rush of the engine as it swept across the meadow at the foot of the hill. Then he would start up, asking eagerly if “they had come, Anna, Rose, and Jamie.” Much he talked of the absent ones, and as day by day went by and still they came not, he wept like a little child, as he said to his wife, “I shall never see them more.” “And if you do not,” she asked, “what shall I tell them?” For a time he lay as if her question was unheard—then opening his eyes he answered, “Tell Anna, my stricken one, that there is for her a balm in Gilead; that whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and though the waters through which she is passing be deep and troubled, they shall not overflow, for the everlasting arms are beneath her.” “And Rosa, have you no message for her?” asked my mother as he ceased speaking.