In the white sheet, drawn straight over the head and the feet, I recognised at once the fearful truth--the little girl was dead. By the head of the bed, and still as one stricken into stone, sat the personage I so often wished to see. The room was shadowy, and his face buried in his hands--nevertheless, I knew him--it was he who had passed me on the bridge. Presently the housekeeper, or one that I took to be she, entered, and whispering to him, he arose and left the room, so that I but imperfectly saw him. When he was gone, the woman folded the covering away from the face, and to my horror I saw that the eyes were still unclosed. Seeing my surprise, she said, as she folded a napkin, and pinned it close over the shut lids---- "It is strange, but the child would never in life close her eyes--her mother, they say, died in watching for one who never came, and the baby was watchful and sleepless from the first." The next day, and the next, it was dull and rainy--excitement and premature exposure had induced a return of my first indisposition, so that I was not at the funeral. I saw, however, from my window, preparations for the burial--to my surprise, in the lonesome little graveyard by the woods. In the course of a fortnight, I prepared for a visit of condolence to the cottage, but, on reaching it, found the inhabitants gone--the place still and empty. On my return, I stopped at the haunted burial ground--close by the grave of Mary Wildermings was that of the stranger child. The briers and thistles had been carefully cut away, there was no slab and no name over either, but the blue and white violets were planted thickly about both. That they slept well, was all I knew. From Household Words. THE SHADOW OF MARGERY PASTON.