The church-door was open. This was the day for sweeping out the Sunday dust. "Is there any record here, any old, forgotten list of deeds done by the early church?" I questioning thought. "There's a new sexton, I heard Aaron say,--a man who used, years ago, to fulfil the duties; perhaps he'll know something of the tower. I'll ask him this very afternoon." In the vestibule lay the brooms and brushes used in renovating the place, the windows were open, but no soul was inside. I walked up the central aisle, and read the mortuary tablets on either pulpit-side. We sometimes like to read that which we best know, and the words on these were written in the air wherever I went, still I chose the marble-reading that day. A little church-mouse ran along the rail, and stopped a moment at the baptismal basin, but, finding no water left by careless sexton there, it continued its journey up the pulpit-stairs, and I saw the hungry little thing go gnawing at the corner of the Book wherein is the Bread of Life. I threw a pine-tree cone that I had gathered in my walk up at the little Vandal, and went out. "I'll wait for the sexton in my tower," thought I; "he'll not be long away, and I can see him as he comes." I looked cautiously up at the study-windows ere I went into the tower. I took out the key, for it fastened only on the outside, and closed myself tightly in. A moment of utter darkness, then the thread of light was let down to me from above. I caught at it, and, groping up the stairs, gained my high window-seat. Without the tower, I saw the deep-sea line, crested with short white waves, the far-away mountain, and all the valley that lay between, while just below me, surging close to the tower's base, were the graves of those who had gone down into the deeper, farther-away Sea of Death, the terrible sea! What _must_ its storms be to evolve such marble foam as that which the shore of our earth receives? "O Death, Death! what art thou?" my spirit cried out in words, and only the dream of Life answered me. In the midst of it, I saw the person who had passed me as I examined the envelope coming up the street churchward. Not a sound of life or of motion came from the building, and I must have heard the slightest movement, for my window was only of iron bars. Losing sight of this face new to me, I lost the memory of it in my dream. Still, this figure coming up the silent village-street on that afternoon I found had unwoven the heavier part of my vision; and to restore it, I took from my pocket, for the second time, my two treasures. Oh, how I did glory in those two wisps of material! The fragment of envelope had come from a foreign land. What contained it once? joy or sorrow? Was the recipient worthy, or the gift true? And I went on with the imaginary story woven out of the shreds of fabric before me until it filled all my vision, when suddenly fancy was hushed to repose,--for, as sure as I sat there, living souls had come into the tower below. How?