"My dear little Earnest,--Long before your eyes will rest upon these lines, the hand that traces them will have mouldered into dust. The contents of this package with my prayerful blessing, is all I have to leave you. As I write these lines you are playing about my room a happy, innocent child. Would that my knowledge could extend into the future, that I might know what manner of youth you will be, when this letter is placed in your hands. But I fear that I am wrong in thus wishing to know the future which a kind Providence has mercifully hidden from us. It is my anxiety for you alone that prompts the desire. I leave a request that this letter be not placed in your hands till you shall have attained the age of fourteen years. For should your life be spared to that period, you will then be capable of reflection. It is my earnest prayer, that you should grow up a good and dutiful boy, and by so doing, reward Mr. and Mrs. Humphrey for the care and instruction, which, I feel confident they will bestow upon you. But, O! my son, should it be otherwise, and you have been led astray by evil companions, I beseech you, my child, to pause and think. Listen to the voice of your mother as if speaking to you, from her grave. _Again_, I say, 'pause and reflect.' If you have evil companions, forsake them at once, and forever. But I trust that these sad forebodings are needless, and that when you read these lines, you will be all that the fond heart of a mother could desire. The Bible and Hymn Book which I leave you belonged to my father, who was a minister of the Church of Scotland. Is it too much for me to hope that you will follow in the footsteps of your deceased grandparent, and use this Bible as he did in the pulpit, as a minister of the gospel? The locket contains the likeness of your father and myself, taken a short time after our marriage. I commit you with many prayers, to the care of your Heavenly Father, for I feel that the hand of death is upon me, and that a few brief days will close my earthly existence. My last prayer will be that my boy may so live on earth, as to meet his mother in Heaven. My strength fails me. I can write no more. "From your loving, but dying mother, "Charlotte Harwood." CHAPTER VIII.