“God will surely let you go home unharmed,” he said one day when Mr. Mather had been more than usually attentive. “I pray to Heaven every hour, that you may never know the dreary heart-pang it costs one to die away from home, and all that we hold dear, for I am dying. I have given up the delusion that to-morrow will find me better. I shall never be better until I wake in Heaven,—shall never go back to Annie,—never see my old home again. It is a humble home, Mr. Mather, but you can’t begin to guess how dear it is to me, because it is the spot where I brought Annie after she was mine. How well I remember that first night of housekeeping; how proud I felt, knowing it was my home, my table, my wife sitting opposite—that her own darling hands had made the tea, and cut the bread she passed me, and that I had earned it, too. The poor have many joys to which the rich are strangers, and I’ve sometimes thought we love each other more because there is little else to divide our love. True it is that mortal man never loved a creature better than I have loved my Annie. She was of gentler blood than I,—was far more delicately reared, and I know it was an unequal match. She was far above me in social position. Highly educated and accomplished, too; she was a belle and favorite everywhere, while I was only George Graham,—a mechanic and engineer. She kept nothing from me, and she told me of a childish fancy when she was a mere girl of fourteen, but if she ever sent a regret after the handsome, black-eyed boy,—the object of that fancy,—it was not perceptible to me. Still, I think that may have had its influence,—that, and the fact that her life was very wretched with her proud, hard aunt, on whom she was dependent, and who wanted her to marry a white-haired millionaire. But Annie chose me, and I have worshipped her with an idolatry which I know was sinful in the sight of Heaven, who will have the first place in our hearts. I have told you all this because your wife has been a friend to Annie, and I want her to know that Annie is her equal, if she did marry a poor mechanic. I am not blaming any one. I know the distinctions there are in social life. I should feel just so, too, perhaps, if I was rich and had been educated as you were. Even as it is I always was proud to think my wife was a lady-born, and I hoped one day to raise her to the position she ought to fill. But that dream is over now. It matters little what becomes of the body after the soul has left it, though I should rather lie in Rockland graveyard, where Annie can sometimes come to see me, and I do so want to hear her voice once more before I go,—to tell her with my own lips that if in Heaven I find a place, she has led me there.” “Suppose we send for her,” Mr. Mather said, the glad thought flashing upon his mind of the joy it would be to see his own darling once more, for if Annie came, Rose, he knew, was sure to come also. “I’ll send for both Annie and Rose at once. They can come on together.”