“She has been here! I was lying here, aunt Samantha, reading 'The Celestial Country,' not thinking of any thing but my book, when suddenly I felt something fanning my forehead, like a wing passing gently over my face. And then something said to me just as plain as I am speaking to you, only, instead of being spoken aloud, it was said to my soul,-- “'You have wanted to see your mother: she is here with you.' “And I dropped my book, and sprung up, and stood trembling, and reached out my hands, and cried,--“'Mother! mother! where are you? Oh! how I have wanted you, mother!' “And then that same voice said to my heart again,-- “'God will take care of the boy.' “And as I stood there trembling, the room seemed full. You know how you would feel if your eyes were shut, and you were placed in a room full of people. You would know they were there--you would feel their presence, though you couldn't see them. You know what the Bible says,--'Seeing we are encompassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses.' That word just describes what I felt. There seemed to be all about me, a great cloud of people. And I put my arms out, and made a rush through them, as you would through a dense crowd, and said again,-- “'Mother! mother! where are you? Speak to me again.' “And then, suddenly, there seemed to be a stir, a movement in the room, something I was conscious of with some finer, more vivid sense than hearing. It seemed to be a great crowd moving, receding. And farther off, but clear, these words came to me again, sweet and solemn,-- “'God will take care of the boy.' “And then I seemed to be alone. And I went out into the hall; and uncle Josiah heard me, and he came out, and asked me what the matter was. “And I told him 'I didn't know.' And my strength left me then; and he took me up in his arms, and brought me back into my room, and laid me on the lounge, and gave me some wine, and I couldn't help crying.” “What for, dear?” says I. “Because I wasn't good enough to see my mother. If I had only been good enough, I could have seen her. For she was here, aunt Samantha, right in this room.” Her eyes wus so big and solemn and earnest, that I knew she meant what she said. But I soothed her down as well as I could, and I says,-- “Mebby you had dropped to sleep, Cicely: mebby you dremp it.” “Yes,” says Josiah, who had come in, and heard my last words. “Yes, Cicely, you dremp it.” Wall, after a while Cicely stopped cryin', and dropped to sleep. And now what I am goin' to tell you is the _truth_. You can believe it, or not, jest as you are a mind to; but it is the _truth_. That night, at sundown, Thomas J. come in with a telegram for Cicely; and she says, without actin' a mite surprised,-- “Aunt Mary is dead.” And sure enough, when she opened it, it was so. She died jest before the time Cicely come out into the hall. Josiah remembered plain. The clock had jest struck two as she opened the door. Her aunt died at two.