“I know that I am dying,” he went on, more weakly than before; “I know that this chill which I feel creeping over me, benumbing my senses and dimming my sight, is death. I know that soon my breath must cease, and that the King of Terrors will cut the cord which binds me to earth and all I love here. But there is no terror in the thought, for the faith which you have taught me points me to the ‘radiant vistas of a world divine,’ where perchance I may find among the ransomed throng a spirit who was once kindred to my own. Ah, my darling, dry your tears, and remember that, in spite of this dissolving frame, _I am whole!_ for the healing hand of Christ hath touched me, while your life, passing in its brief transit over mine, has been the instrument of it all.” Is this a sad scene with which to close my story? Is it _sad_ to see the fruits of a beautiful life, and to learn how one faithful soul led another home to heaven and God? Will any one call such a triumph as the passing away of Jacob Rosevelt _sad_? No. At least it did not appear so to those who witnessed it. It was a hallowed room where Star sat, a little later, and gazed upon her dead—upon that brow which had settled into such tranquillity—upon that restful, upturned face, which wore a smile “calm as a twilight lake,” and upon which “God’s full-orbed peace was shining,” transfiguring it with something of the radiance that had enraptured the fleeting soul. But she would not grieve for him; for, although she should never cease to yearn “——for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that was still,” she knew that, in that far-off world “where the weary are at rest,” it was “well with him.” And when they laid him away in the family vault at Halowell, where, too, lay the moldering form of her whom he had so loved in the days of his earlier manhood, she did not murmur, for she felt that he had left behind him a wealth of faith, and love, and trust that would glorify all her own after-life, and she found herself repeating, with one of our sweetest poets: “Do men die thus? And is it this to die?” All through the years that came and went in her beautiful home, of which she was the chief charm, she carried the memory and influences of that last hour of Jacob Rosevelt’s life, and it seemed to be an added link in the golden chain that bound her soul to their common God. The thought of it was like a strain of heavenly music, making her life rich with melody. It was like a breath from the flowers of Paradise, perfuming all around her. Her husband worshiped her—reverently, as a gift from the Divine Hand; her children “sat at her feet and learned of her,” and, rising up, “called her blessed;” while all who knew her likened the influence of her lovely example, the luster and beauty of her life, to the “transit” of some bright “star.” [THE END.]