"It's you, miss, is it?" said Mrs. Hunt, appearing at last in answer to Helen's timid knocking; "go up if you like. Nobody can do any good, I'm afeard. But it's kind of you to come." Helen made no answer, but climbed the narrow staircase and entered the sick boy's room. There was no change since her last visit, although she fancied that Jim's face brightened a little as she went in. Very gently she attended to his comfort, and she even succeeded in making him swallow some milk that stood by his bedside. Then he closed his eyes, and she went and sat down by the window, wondering whether a sense of human companionship was the comfort to Jim that she fancied it would be to herself under similar circumstances. Very slowly the afternoon wore on. Every now and then the sick boy stirred and recommenced his confused talk. Such strange talk it seemed to Helen to come from dying lips. It was his work that troubled him. The fowls that would lay away, the cows that he could not milk, the sheep that would stray. And he was always late, and father would come home and be angry. "Poor Jim! perhaps his work is all done. Perhaps no one will ever be angry with him any more," thought Helen, tears rising to her eyes. Seen in this light it did occur to her that dying was not such a very sad thing after all. Here was Jim, whose life had been a hard one, who had known no pleasures, who was stupid, every one said, and whom no one had cared for much. That very night, perhaps, he would know more than the wisest man living; he might be seeing more beautiful things than we can even picture, and be making the most wonderful discoveries about that undying love which Cousin Mary had said was always about us from the moment we were born. And on earth no one would speak his name save gently, no one would remember that he was plain and silly, but he would be thought of tenderly, and even those who had not loved him would have a sigh to give to his memory. "Was dying so very sad after all?" Helen was still asking herself this question, when from below there came a sound of merry laughter, and of trampling childish feet. The children were coming out from school, and simultaneously the whole village seemed to wake up. Boys shouted and played; lowing cows were brought in to be milked; the women began their preparations for the evening meal, and, from their open doorways, called loudly upon their respective children. Life was there; and here was death. Poor Jim! never to mingle with his fellows again; never to feel the warm sun and the soft air; to go away from the cheerful day into the dark unknown. Yes; it was dreadful, dreadful, and Helen buried her face in her hands to shut out the sad picture.