People pity her now, because she is so young and pretty--not reflecting that the possession of the two best gifts under heaven makes her so much the less worthy a subject for compassion. Twenty years hence, she will probably be a "companion" still--will be not near so young, nor near so touching, and infinitely more to be pitied. The snow lies long--longer than it generally does at this time of year. Ordinarily the old Cheshire saying holds good: "If there's ice in October as 'll hould a duck, All the rest of the winter 'll turn to muck!" But this October there has been ice enough to hold many ducks; but yet the rest of the winter shows no signs of, as the homely saw phrases it, "turning to muck." In the little flower-garden, round three sides of which the ivied buttressed house is built, only a white heap here, and a white depression there, show where bush or bed were wont to be. Over the fair wide park, with all its mimic hills and valleys, copses and spinneys, God has laid a great sheet--great as the one that was let down by its four corners on the housetop to the fastidious Apostle--a sheet purely, crisply, miserably white. In the park Esther, in the early gloaming, after the daily drive, so literally a promenade _en voiture_, takes long walks; ruins her boots, discolours her petticoats, and makes her crape crimp with snow-water: strolls listless and alone under the old bare trees that have stripped off all their clothing--now at the very time that they seem to need them most; traces the slender footprints of the famished birds--the little delicate tracks crossing and recrossing one another. And always the leading thought--displaced now and then by lesser thoughts, that flit like travelling swallows through her mind, but ever, ever returning--is, "Where is Jack? Where has my boy gone to? Where is he _now, at this moment?_" If some trusty messenger could but come to her, with sure tidings, saying, "It is well with him!" Has she any reason for believing him to be in heaven, beyond the vague confidence that most people seem to feel that their relatives must be there, on the principle, I suppose, of the French Duke, of whom his kindred remarked, that "God would certainly think twice 'avant de damner une personne de sa qualité!'" Jack's death had been most unlike the deaths of the shining Evangelical lights in Bessy Brandon's books, whose whole lives had been but trifling prologues to the jubilant drama of their death. Death had been to them an ecstasy; they had died with words of confident rapture on their lips, with strains of welcoming music in their ears: he had departed painfully, sadly, almost dumbly; no sound of triumphant clarions greeted him from beyond Death's deep ford. Is he, then, in _hell?_ Oh blessed doctrine of cleansing purgatorial pains! if our faith would but admit of you! Which of us does not seem to himself so much too bad for heaven, so much too good for hell?