Sir Everard was greatly distressed; the boy fixed his eye so pleadingly on him, he was so earnest in what he was trying to say, that it went to the father's heart not to be able to understand him. He strained every nerve to catch the words, but in vain. The excitement of hearing his uncle returning gave Humphrey a momentary strength, and he held his father's hand with all the strength he could muster, and said, "Promise!" "I promise, my darling," said Sir Everard, hastily, too thankful to catch even a word. And nobody ever knew that the boy's last request had been that never, never was his uncle to know that it was his story that had first made him think of the branch that stretched over the pond where the water-lilies grew. Quite worn out he allowed himself to be laid back upon his pillow, and with closed eyes waited while his uncle opened the Bible and found the underlined passage:-- "And I heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters ... and I heard the harpers harping with their harps. And they sang as it were a new song ... and no man could learn that song, but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from the earth." * * * * * * No more restless questions, no more perplexed search after what is lying somewhere in the past. He did not speak, he did not answer his father's eager enquiry as to whether that was what he had been trying to remember; and he lay so still, so motionless, that for one moment they thought he had passed away without hearing the words he had longed for. But the unsatisfied look had gone from his face, and his father saw that his mind was at rest. He was breathing gently as in a deep sleep. That is all the watchers saw. And the child himself! How shall we attempt to follow the hazy imaginings of his weak and wandering mind? Dreamily are returning to him the thoughts which had possession of him that summer Sunday as he sat in his corner in the old grey church. Visions of beauty are floating before him, evoked that day in his mind by the powerful imagery of Scripture; now recalled by association: the material joys which form a child's idea of heaven--the gates, and the harps, and the angels. Dim conceptions of white-robed thousands wandering in the golden Jerusalem, by the jasper sea. Not strange to him that throng of angels, for foremost among them all, more beautiful than any, is the figure of his mother, standing as in the picture, looking down upon him with a smile. Heaven to him is peopled with her image, for he has no other notion of all that is fair and holy. In that great multitude whom no man can number, there is not one that can be called a stranger, all have the soft eyes and the familiar smile.