"She'll make a beautiful corpse," said Aunt Roxy, surveying the still, white form contemplatively, with her head in an artistic attitude. "She was a pretty girl," said Aunt Ruey; "dear me, what a Providence! I 'member the wedd'n down in that lower room, and what a handsome couple they were." "They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided," said Aunt Roxy, sententiously. "What was it she said, did ye hear?" said Aunt Ruey. "She called the baby 'Mary.'" "Ah! sure enough, her mother's name afore her. What a still, softly-spoken thing she always was!" "A pity the poor baby didn't go with her," said Aunt Roxy; "seven-months' children are so hard to raise." "'Tis a pity," said the other. But babies will live, and all the more when everybody says that it is a pity they should. Life goes on as inexorably in this world as death. It was ordered by THE WILL above that out of these two graves should spring one frail, trembling autumn flower,--the "Mara" whose poor little roots first struck deep in the salt, bitter waters of our mortal life. CHAPTER III THE BAPTISM AND THE BURIAL Now, I cannot think of anything more unlikely and uninteresting to make a story of than that old brown "linter" house of Captain Zephaniah Pennel, down on the south end of Orr's Island. Zephaniah and Mary Pennel, like Zacharias and Elizabeth, are a pair of worthy, God-fearing people, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless; but that is no great recommendation to a world gaping for sensation and calling for something stimulating. This worthy couple never read anything but the Bible, the "Missionary Herald," and the "Christian Mirror,"--never went anywhere except in the round of daily business. He owned a fishing-smack, in which he labored after the apostolic fashion; and she washed, and ironed, and scrubbed, and brewed, and baked, in her contented round, week in and out. The only recreation they ever enjoyed was the going once a week, in good weather, to a prayer-meeting in a little old brown school-house, about a mile from their dwelling; and making a weekly excursion every Sunday, in their fishing craft, to the church opposite, on Harpswell Neck.