The stream could sound their requiem; the lake could moan its lament, and every wave might be supposed to carry a portion of their precious forms to distant shores; but God alone could gather the elements, and fashion it for the future love. Nothing but the sacred urn of earth, which contains all that is mortal of the human race--nothing but this, is the depository of those loved forms which were once so full of life; but everything in nature becomes the more precious to the longing heart. Unseen fingers shall weave their garments in the spring, and the songs shall burst forth from those forest hills, but the better land contains their spirits, and to that, the living must go to claim their own. [Illustration: THE NEW BRIDGE, WITH TEMPORARY UNDERPINNING. [From a Photograph by Kitzsteiner & Greene, Cleveland.]] CHAPTER XIII. THE RAILROAD OFFICIALS. It was well that the revolting sights of that dark, that horrid morgue were denied to many of the friends. Every effort was taken to relieve the pangs of sorrow and to remove the revolting features of that awful scene. Coffins were soon procured. Each body was placed in its silent, its narrow house. The keeper of the morgue was stationed to watch the sacred forms. He was a silent man. Tall and dark and gloomy, he walked amid the dead, but beneath that silent face he bore a kindly, a sympathetic heart. He seemed himself to be struck with the grief which went so deep into so many loving souls. His tones were tender, his ways were kind. He walked amid the dead until it seemed as if his habitation must be the grave, but it was only to express a sympathy for the bereft. His was a gloomy, a melancholy task, and yet it was a sacred trust, as those bodies which he guarded so well, were very sacred to many hearts.