Again, however, the child looked up, and murmured, 'You have not read to-day.' Cora, who had the Bible on her knee, gently obeyed, and read on, where she was, the morning First Lesson, the same in the American Church as in our own. Averil, dull with watching and suffering, sat on dreamily, with the scent of primroses wafted to her, as it were, by the association of the words, though her power to attend to them was gone. Before the chapter was over, the doze had overshadowed the little girl again; and yet, more than once, as the night drew on, they heard her muttering what seemed like the echo of one of its verses, 'Turn you, turn you--' At last, after hours of watching, and more than one vain endeavour of good Cousin Deborah to lead away the worn but absorbed nurses, the dread messenger came. Minna turned suddenly in her sister's arms, with more strength than Averil had thought was left in her, and eagerly stretched out her arms, while the words so long trembling on her lips found utterance. 'Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope! O, Leonard dear! it does not hurt!' But that last word was almost lost in the gasp--the last gasp. What 'did not hurt' was death without his sting. 'O, Cora! Was he with her? Is he gone too?' was Averil's cry at the first moment, as she strained the form of her little comforter for the last time in her arms. 'And if he is, they are in joy together,' said Cousin Deborah, tenderly but firmly unloosing Averil's arms, though with the tears running down her cheeks. 'Take her away, Cora, and both of you sleep. This dear lamb is in better keeping than yours.' Heavy, grievous, was the loss, crushing the grief; but it was such as to be at its softest and sweetest at Easter, amid the Resurrection joys, and the budding flowers, though Ella's bitterest fit of weeping was excited by there being no primroses--the primroses that Minna loved so much; and her first pleasurable thought was to sit down and write to her dear 'Mr. Tom' to send her some primrose seed, for Minna's grave. Minna's grave! Alas! Massissauga had but an untidy desolate-looking region, with a rude snake fence, all unconsecrated! Cora wanted to choose a shaded corner in her father's ground, where they might daily tend the child's earthly resting-place; but Averil shrank from this with horror; and finally, on one of the Easter holidays, the little wasted form in its coffin was reverently driven by Philetus to Winiamac, while the sisters and Cora slowly followed, thinking--the one of the nameless blood-stained graves of a battle-field; the other whether an equally nameless grave-yard, but one looked on with a shudder unmixed with exultation, had opened for the other being she loved best. 'The Resurrection and the Life.--Yes, had not He made His grave with the wicked, and been numbered with the transgressors!'