Over it Lillian shed such tears as have bedewed the relics of the dead since first this sad old world knew loss, since first a grave was filled. How unavailing! How lacerating! How consoling! She began to feel a plaintive sympathy for all the bereaved of earth, and her heart and mind grew more submissive as she remembered that only for this cause Jesus wept, albeit a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." The little coat, so gayly decorated, reminded her of another coat of many colors, its splendor testimony of the gentlest domestic affection, brought stained with blood to another parent long ago, to interpret the cruel mystery of a son's death. And after all these centuries she felt drawn near to Jacob in the tender realization of a common humanity, and often repeated his despairing words, "I shall go down into the grave unto my son mourning." Then her heart was pierced with self-pity for the contrast of his gratuitous affliction with her hopeless grief. So happy in truth was he, despite his thought of woe, that he should have lamented as dead his son, who was so full of life the while, whose future on earth was destined to be so long and so beneficent. She spoke of this so often and so wistfully that it seemed to Gladys to precipitate an illusion, which afterward absorbed her mind to the exclusion of all else. VIII. One sinister day when the slate-hued clouds hung low, and the valley was dark and drear with its dense leafless forests, when the mountains gloomed a sombre purple and no sound but the raucous cawing of crows broke upon the sullen air, Lillian's paroxysms of grief seemed to reach a climax. Their intensity alarmed her two companions, and the forced composure and latent strength of character of Gladys were tried to the utmost to sustain her own equilibrium. But as the afternoon wore away Lillian grew calmer, though her mind never deviated from the subject. The trio had ceased to sit in the large reception hall, for its gun-rack and rods and reels, its fur rugs, its trophies of sport, its mandolin and flute and piano, were now pathetically reminiscent of the vanished presence of its joyous and genial owner. They used instead the small library which opened from it, where a spacious bay-window gave ample light in the dreary days, and the big wood fire sent its flash and fragrance to the remotest corner. It filled with a rich glow the fabric of the little red coat as the mother held the sleeve to her lips and then turned it to readjust the cuff creased in folding. "He used to look so pretty in it. My beauty! My baby! My own!" she cried out in a voice muffled, half-smothered, by her choking throat. "And he thought it so fine! He valued it beyond all his other possessions," she continued presently with a melancholy smile, even while the tears, so bitter that they stung her cheeks, coursed down her face; for she had begun to find a