It needs not to say how promptly I betook myself to the house of mourning--how earnestly I pressed for admittance to the forlorn survivor, who had locked himself into his library, at the door of which stood Hallings in an agony of grief and apprehension, imploring leave to enter, if but for a moment. I joined my supplications to his, and after a time we heard a heavy sigh, and the approach of feeble footsteps to the door, on the opening of which the bereaved old man, as if overpowered by the effort, staggered backwards, and would have fallen, but that I caught him in my arms, and supported him to his easy-chair, still holding his hand, as I took my seat beside him, in that deep awe of silent sympathy, which feels it profanation to break in with human speech upon the sacredness of unutterable sorrow. Long he lay back, as he had sunk into his chair, silent and motionless. The small thin hand I held, was as cold and pale as that of a corpse; and as I contemplated his venerable countenance, colourless as the hand, the closed eyelids, and sunken temples, and every sharpened feature set in rigid and unnatural composure, I was startled--not shocked--by a sudden thought that the imperishable spirit had departed already from that poor frame of decaying mortality. In breathless awe I stole my fingers gently to the wrist of the hand I held in mine, _almost_ praying inwardly that I might find all quiet there; but even while I felt for the imperceptible pulse, a change came over the pale countenance--a slight tremor of the muscles about the mouth, a quivering of the lower eyelids, and then a tear stole glistening through the thin worn lashes of either eye, and slowly, heavily trickled down the furrowed cheek, and after a minute the trembling hand was withdrawn from the tender pressure of mine, and with its fellow joined and half upraised in the attitude of prayer. The old man's eyes were still closed, but his lips moved, and in the tremulous accents which escaped them, I distinguished--"I thank thee!... I thank thee.... Oh Lord!... Thou hast taken _her_ from the evil to come."