"What are you keeping Miss Gray there for?" pettishly said the voice of Mary, "I want her." "And here I am, dear," said Rachel, going in to her, "I am come to sit a while with you; for I am sure your poor father wants rest, does he not?" "I don't want any one to sit with me," impatiently replied Mary, "I am not so ill as all that." "But do you sleep at night?" "No, I can't--I am so feverish." "Well, then, we sit up with you to keep you company," said her father. This explanation apparently satisfied Mary, who began to talk of other things. She knew not she was dying; whence should the knowledge have come to a mere child like her. None had told her the truth. And she was passing away into eternity, unconscious--her heart, her thoughts, her soul full of the shadows of life. Rachel saw and knew it, and it grieved her. She remembered her little sister's happy and smiling death-bed, and from her heart she prayed that a similar blessing might crown the last hours of little Mary; that she might go to her God like a child to her father. And when Richard Jones, after sitting up with them until twelve, went upstairs to rest awhile, and Rachel heard Mary talk of her recovery, and of projects and hopes, vain to her as a dream, she could not help feeling that it was her duty to speak. They were alone, "yes, now," thought Rachel, "now is the time to speak." Oh! hard and bitter task: to tell the young of death; the hoping that they must not hope; to tell those who would so fondly delay and linger in this valley, that they must depart for the land that is so near, and that seems so far. Rachel knew not how to begin. Mary opened the subject. "I shall be glad when I am well again," she said, "I am tired of this little room; it seems so dull when I see the sun shine in the street, don't it, Miss Gray?" "I dare say it does: you remind me of a little story I once read; shall I tell it to you?" "Oh! yes you may," carelessly replied Mary, yawning slightly; she thought Miss Gray prosy at times. "It is not a long story," said Rachel timidly, "and here it is; a king was once hunting alone in a wood, when he heard a very beautiful voice singing very sweetly; he went on and saw a poor leper." "What's a leper?" interrupted Mary. "Don't you remember the lepers in the Gospel, who were made clean by our Saviour? they were poor things, who had a bad and loathsome complaint, and this man, whom the king heard singing, was one; and the king could not help saying to him, 'how can you sing when you seem in so wretched a condition?' But the leper replied, 'it is because I am in this state that I sing, for as my body decays, I know that the hour of my deliverance draws nigh, that I shall leave this miserable world, and go to my Lord and my God.'" Mary looked at Rachel surprised at the impressive and earnest tone with which she spoke. "Well but, Miss Gray," she said, at length, "what is there like me in this story; I am not a leper, am I?"