“Oh, Rosa, Rosa,” he answered quickly, “Tell her—tell her everything—but not here—not in this room. She thinks I do not love her, and when she comes and finds me gone, go with her to my grave. She will believe you if you tell her there how dear she was to me, and how, through the long weary nights before I died, I wept and prayed for her that she might one day meet me in the better land. I never meant to love one child more than another, but if I did—tell her she was my pride, the one on whom I doted. She thought me cold and unfeeling, because I stayed not to bid her adieu that morning. Ah, she did not know that with the first dawn of day I stole up to her chamber to look on her once more for the last, last time. There were tears on her cheek, I kissed them away; tell her that, and perchance her heart will soften towards her poor old father.” From that time he sank rapidly, and one bright September day, near the hour of sunset, it was told in Meadow Brook that he was dying. On such occasions, in a small country village, the liveliest sympathy is felt; and now those who knew and loved him spoke to each other softly and low, while even the little children ceased their noisy play upon the common, and with a timid, curious glance towards the open windows of the sick room, hastened home, where they kept closely at their mother’s side, wondering—asking of her what death was, and if she were sure that he, the dying one, would go to Heaven. Meantime, the sun was almost set, and as its last golden rays fell upon the face of the sufferer, a radiant smile lit up his features, and he exclaimed aloud, “’Tis the glorious light of the Eternal shining down upon me. Do not weep, mother. We shall not be parted long,” he continued, as he felt upon his forehead a tear from the grey-haired, wrinkled woman, on whose bosom his head was pillowed, just as it had been, long, long ago, when first a tender babe he lay in that mother’s arms. To her it seemed not long, and yet it was fifty years since he was lent to her, and now, when God would have his own again, she said submissively, “Thy will be done.” Once before had a great sorrow fallen upon her, leaving her henceforth to walk alone, and then her soul had well-nigh fainted beneath the blow, for she was younger far by many years. But now she was old, and already she heard the roar of the deep dark river on whose very banks she stood, and down whose swift current her first born was floating; so she stifled her own grief, for, as he had said, she knew it would not be long ere they met again. “Where is Fanny?” he asked, and his arms closed fondly around his wife. It mattered not that time and care had dimmed the lustre of her eye, and robbed her cheek of its girlish bloom; to him she was beautiful still, for through weal and woe she had been faithful to her marriage vow, and now the bitterest pang of all was the leaving _her_ alone.