It was a sad, but not unprofitable lesson, which William Mather was learning by that bedside. At home in Rockland, where their positions were so different, he had always respected George Graham, but he had learned to love him now with a brother’s love, and gladly would he have saved him for the sweet wife in whom his own darling Rose was so deeply interested, and whose letters were silently working good in him as well as George. Greatly his personal friends marvelled that he should stay so closely immured within that sick-room, when he might, had he chosen, have mingled much in the world without, and many were the attempts they made to drag him away. But he withstood them all, and clung the closer to his friend, who leaned upon him with all the trustful confidence of a little child. Hour after hour he sat by his patient, reading to him from Annie’s well-worn Bible, and when at last the heavy cloud was lifted, and the pathway through the valley of death was divested of its gloom, he was the first to whom the sick man imparted the joyful news, that whether he lived or died, all was well,—all was peace within. In silence and in tears Mr. Mather listened to the story of what was so strange to him, and in the next letter sent to Rose, he told her of the new resolves awakened within him, tracing them back to that humble cottage in the Hollow, where Annie Graham, unknown save to a few, was wielding a mighty power for good. Everything which he could do for George he did, and Annie herself could scarcely have been more gentle or kind; and George,—oh how grateful he was to his noble friend, blessing him so often for the kindly deeds.