I looked down upon the gravelly earth lying above her, as I had looked across at it when I left the parsonage at night fall, and passed by the church-yard. All the while, my eyes were in the depths of the fire. I went down through stone and soil to the coffin there. All was unutterable blackness. I put out my hand to feel. It was a cold, marbleized face that my warm, living fingers wandered over. I touched the forehead: it was very stony, granite-like,--not a woman's forehead. The eyes were large,--I felt them under the half-closed lids. The mouth--Yes, Miss Lettie was right. Love for Abraham had covered up this mother-love for her. And confession unto her dead was, it must have been, better than unto her living. The answer would have been much the same. Shudderingly, I picked up my hand, the one that had been lying upon the arm of the chair, whilst its life and spirit had gone out on their mission of discovery. It was very cold. I warmed it before the fire, and began to think that Aaron was right,--this House of Axtell was stealing away my proper self, or, at least, this hand of mine had been unlawfully employed, through occasion of them. As the warmth of burning coals revivified my hand, I saw something in the fire,--a face,--the very one these live fingers had just been tracing in yonder church-yard. Its eyes were open now,--large, luminous, earnest, with a wave of solid pride sweeping on through the irides and almost overwhelming the pupils. The mouth,--oh, those lips! _ever uttered they a prayer_? They look, trembling the while, so unutterably unforgiving! When they come to stand before the I AM, will they _ever_ plead? It is hard to think the Deity maketh such souls. Doth He? I looked a little farther on in the fiery group. Other forms of coal took the human face. I saw two. Whose were they? One was like unto my mother. How little I remember of her! and yet this was like my memory,--sweetly gentle, loving past expression's power, no taint of earth therein. Another came up. I did not know it. Something whispered, "It is of you." I almost heard the words with my outward ears. I looked around the room. No one was with me. Stillness reigned in the house. "It takes Mr. Axtell a very long time to take his tea," I thought; "he must know more of hunger's power than I.--I will look at the fire no more," I said, slowly, to myself, and closed my eyelids, somewhat willing to drop after all that they had endured that day.