Silently, as if she was not able to speak, she pointed out the medicines to me, and then went slowly away. I followed her to the door, for I saw that she beckoned me. How changed I must have been! for Alice seemed almost afraid to speak to me, whom she had been used to call her child. "Miss Hester!" she whispered, with a faltering eager tone, and under her breath, "do not tell him--for pity's sake do not let him know what you have found out." I made her no answer, but closed the door and came back to his bedside. There I sat down again in silence. I had nothing to say to him--nothing to say to him! neither of earth nor heaven! "What have you to tell me, Hester?" said my father, at last. "I am about leaving you--are you aware of it?--do you know that this is the day which I looked forward to, when I asked you to place your fortune in my hands?" "Yes, father!" I was stupid, sullen, dead. I could show no feeling, for indeed I felt none yet. "I am glad that you decided as you did, Hester," continued my father; "I have now no weight upon my conscience--no dread that I have compromised your happiness; and you have a protector and a home. You are happy, my love?" "Did you say happy? oh, yes!" I said with almost a laugh; "happy, very happy, papa." Strange as it seemed to me, he appeared contented with what I said--he made no more reference to it; he lifted my hand gently up and down in his own. "And I am going away," he said slowly, "going away, Hester--where?" Where? the word struck me with a strange superstitious terror. For the first tune I was roused to look eagerly and inquiringly in his face. "Not to the family grave, Hester!" he said with a smile of awful amusement--yes, amusement, there is no other word, "that is only a stage in the journey--where am I going beyond that? Have you nothing to say?" "Father--father!" I said wildly, with a breathless horror. "Ay, but you cannot pilot me!" said my father; "and by-and-bye my ears will be deaf, should all the voices in the world echo my name." I bent over him, holding him with terror unspeakable. Little training in religion had fallen to my share; but I had the natural sentiment--the natural dread; and I forgot everything else in the deadly fear which made me cling to my father now. "Why do you not tell me to be resigned?" said my father. "Do you know what I am setting out upon, Hester? Distance, distance, distance--vaster than anything in our moorland--a dark, solitary journey, where no one knows the way. Death! who believes in _that?_ it is but an arbitrary word--one of the names we use for things we cannot comprehend; and no one tells me where is the end." "Oh, father, father, it is in the Bible!" cried I. "Yes, it is in the Bible. Are you afraid I do not believe it, child? I believe it--but I see no clearer for my faith," said my father. "I believe it as I believe that Columbus discovered a new world. But what is Columbus and his new world to me?"