* * * * * The cottage is still. The servants glide noiseless, as if they might startle the poor little sleeper. The house seems cold—very cold. Yet it is summer weather; and the south breeze plays softly along the meadow and softly over the murderous eddies of the brook. * * * * * Then comes the hush of burial. The kind mourners are there; it is easy for them to mourn! The good clergyman prays by the bier: “Oh, Thou, who didst take upon Thyself human woe, and drank deep of every pang in life, let Thy spirit come and heal this grief, and guide toward that better Land, where justice and love shall reign, and hearts laden with anguish shall rest for evermore!” Weeks roll on, and a smile of resignation lights up the saddened features of the mother. Those dark mourning robes speak to the heart deeper and more tenderly than ever the bridal costume. She lightens the weight of your grief by her sweet words of resignation: “Paul,” she says, “God has taken our boy!” Other weeks roll on. Joys are still left—great and ripe joys. The cottage smiling in the autumn sunshine is there; the birds are in the forest boughs; Jamie and little Carry are there; and she, who is more than them all, is cheerful and content. Heaven has taught us that the brightest future has its clouds—that this life is a motley of lights and shadows. And as we look upon the world around us, and upon the thousand forms of human misery, there is a gladness in our deep thanksgiving. A year goes by, but it leaves no added shadow on our hearthstone. The vines clamber and flourish; the oaks are winning age and grandeur; little Carry is blooming into the pretty coyness of girlhood, and Jamie, with his dark hair and flashing eyes, is the pride of his mother. There is no alloy to pleasure, but the remembrance of poor little Paul. And even that, chastened as it is with years, is rather a grateful memorial that our life is not all here than a grief that weighs upon our hearts. Sometimes, leaving little Carrie and Jamie to their play, we wander at twilight to the willow tree beneath which our drowned boy sleeps calmly for the great Awaking. It is a Sunday, in the week-day of our life, to linger by the little grave—to hang flowers upon the head-stone, and to breathe a prayer that our little Paul may sleep well in the arms of Him who loveth children. And her heart, and my heart, knit together by sorrow, as they had been knit by joy—a silver thread mingled with the gold—follow the dead one to the land that is before us, until at last we come to reckon the boy as living in the new home which, when this is old, shall be ours also. And my spirit, speaking to his spirit, in the evening watches, seems to say joyfully—so joyfully that the tears half choke the utterance—“Paul, my boy, we will be _there_!”