It seems that the little boy--the baby--crept into the kitchen by himself, and began to throw the contents of the match-box on the stove, “to make a bonfire,” the poor little fellow said. In five minutes his apron was ablaze. His mother was on the spot at his first cry, and smothered the little apron, and saved the child, but her dress was muslin, and everybody was too far off to hear her at first,--and by the time her husband came in from the garden it was too late. She is living yet. Her husband, pacing the room back and forth, and crouching on his knees by the hour, is praying God to let her die before the morning. Morning. There is no chance of life, the doctor says. But he has been able to find something that has lessened her sufferings. She lies partially unconscious. Wednesday night. Aunt Winifred and I were over at the parsonage to-night, when she roused a little from her stupor and recognized us. She spoke to her husband, and kissed me good by, and asked for the children. They were playing softly in the next room; we sent for them, and they came in,--the four unconscious, motherless little things,--with the sunlight in their hair. The bitterness of death came into her marred face at sight of them, and she raised her hands to Auntie--to the only other mother there--with a sudden helpless cry: “I could bear it, I could bear it, if it weren’t for _them_. Without any mother all their lives,--such little things,--and to go away where I can’t do a single _thing_ for them!” Aunt Winifred stooped down and spoke low, but decidedly. “You _will_ do for them. God knows all about it. He will not send you away from them. You shall be just as much their mother, every day of their lives, as you have been here. Perhaps there is something to do for them which you never could have done here. He sees. He loves them. He loves you.” If I could paint, I might paint the look that struck through and through that woman’s dying face; but words cannot touch it. If I were Aunt Winifred, I should bless God on my knees to-night for having shown me how to give such ease to a soul in death. Thursday morning. God is merciful. Mrs. Bland died at five o’clock. 10th. How such a voice from the heavens shocks one out of the repose of calm sorrows and of calm joys. This has come and gone so suddenly that I cannot adjust it to any quiet and trustful thinking yet. The whole parish mourns excitedly; for, though they worked their minister’s wife hard, they loved her well. I cannot talk it over with the rest. It jars. Horror should never be dissected. Besides, my heart is too full of those four little children with the sunlight in their hair and the unconsciousness in their eyes. 15th. Mrs. Quirk came over to-day in great perplexity. She had just come from the minister’s.