With hushed breath and a beating heart, Wilford stepped across the threshold, and Helen closed the door, leaving him alone with the living and the dead. Pure and beautiful as some fair blossom, the dead child lay upon the bed, the curls of golden hair clustering about its head, and on its lips the smile which settled there when it tried to say “mamma.” Its dimpled hands were folded upon its breast, where lay the cross of flowers which Marian Hazelton had made. There were flowers upon its pillow, flowers around its head, flowers upon its shroud, flowers everywhere, and itself the fairest flower of all, Wilford thought, as he stood gazing at it and then let his eye move on to where poor, tired, worn-out Katy had crept up so close beside it that her breath touched the marble cheek and her own disordered hair rested upon the pillow of her child. Even in her sleep her tears kept dropping and the pale lips quivered in a grieved, touching way. Hard indeed would Wilford have been had he cherished one bitter thought against the wife so wounded. He could not when he saw her, but no one ever knew just what passed through his mind during the half hour he sat there beside her, scarcely stirring and not daring to kiss his child lest he should awaken her. He could hear the ticking of his watch and the beating of his heart as he waited for the first sound which should herald’s Katy’s waking. Suddenly there was a low, gasping moan, and Katy’s eyes unclosed and rested on her husband. He was bending over her in an instant, and her arms were round his neck, while she said to him so sadly, “Our baby is dead—you’ve nobody left but me; and oh! Wilford, you will not blame me for bringing baby here? I did not think she’d die. I’d give my life for hers if that would bring her back. Would you rather it was me lying as baby lies, and she here in your arms?” “No, Katy,” Wilford answered, and by his voice Katy knew that she was wholly forgiven, crying on his neck in a plaintive, piteous way, while Wilford soothed and pitied and caressed, feeling subdued and humbled, and we must confess it, feeling too how very good and generous he was to be thus forbearing, when but for Katy’s act of disobedience they might not now be childless! * * * * * With a great gush of tears Bell Cameron bent over the little form, and then enfolded Katy in a more loving embrace than she had ever given her before; but whatever she might have said was prevented by the arrival of the coffin, and the confusion which followed.