On a bed, white and beautifully clean, lay a fragile creature, terribly white herself, save where red live coals gleamed in her cheeks beneath the bright, blazing, fever-fire burning in her eyes above. She coughed and smiled and lay still, smiling. She smiled because a little one--a tiny, sickly little girl--had come up to the bed and patted her cheek and said: "Little mother--little mother!" There were four other children in the room, and they sat around in all the solemn, awe-stricken sorrow of death, seen for the first time. Then a man in an invalid chair, helpless and with a broken spine, spoke, as if thinking aloud: "She's all the mother the little 'uns ever had, Bishop--'pears like it's cruel for God to take her from them." "God's cruelty is our crown," said the old man--"we'll understand it by and by." Then the beautiful woman who had come over the mountain arose from the seat by the fireside, and came to the bed. She took the little one in her arms and petted and soothed her. The child looked at her timidly in childish astonishment. She was not used to such a beautiful woman holding her--so proud and fine--from a world that she knew was not her world. "May I give you some nourishment now, Maggie?" The girl shook her head. "No--no--Miss Alice," and then she smiled so brightly and cheerfully that the little one in Alice Westmore's arms clapped her hands and laughed: "Little mother--be up, well, to-morrow." Little Mother turned her eyes on the child quickly, smiled and nodded approval. But there were tears--tears which the little one did not understand. An hour went by--the wind had ceased, and with it the rain. The children were asleep in bed; the father in his chair. A cold sweat had broken out on the dying girl's forehead and she breathed with a terrible effort. And in it all the two watchers beside the bed saw that there was an agony there but not the fear of death. She kept trying to bite her nails nervously and saying: "There is only-- ... one thing-- ... one ... thing...." "Tell me, Maggie," said the old man, bending low and soothing her forehead with his hands, "tell us what's pesterin' you--maybe it hadn't oughter be. You mustn't worry now--God'll make everything right--to them that loves him even to the happy death. You'll die happy an' be happy with him forever. The little 'uns an' the father, you know they're fixed here--in this nice home an' the farm--so don't worry." "That's it!.... Oh, that's it!.... I got it that way-- ... all for them ... but it's that that hurts now...." He bent down over her: "Tell us, child--me an' Miss Alice--tell us what's pesterin' you. You mustn't die this way--you who've got such a right to be happy." The hectic spark burned to white heat in her cheek. She bit her nails, she picked at the cover, she looked toward the bed and asked feebly: "Are they asleep? Can I talk to you two?" The old man nodded. Alice soothed her brow.