“There is something I have done in regard to you, Mr. Whittier,” she began at last----“and I’m afraid you’ll be angry with me,” she added with a new fearfulness. Instantly, he turned his face from the fire into which he had been gazing and looked at her. He read all her fears. His whole face softened. His flashing eyes met hers. “I shall not be angry long,” he answered; and was silent, waiting. But the glance, the perfect assurance of the tone were more than comfort; they were comprehension and the glad evidence of a trust too firm to be lightly overthrown. And as she told her story, freely now, it turned out that he had known it, and in a moment by his tact and judgment had righted everything she had feared that she had tangled. * * * * * “I have been unable to write for some weeks except at rare intervals, as my eyes are failing me, and my general health and strength are so diminished,” he wrote from Amesbury in the May of 1889. “I never expect to write again except an occasional note in private correspondence. The mental effort of dictation which I have tried is too hard for me. Phebe [the adopted daughter of his cousin, Mrs. Woodman at Oak Knoll] has tried to be my amanuensis, but to little purpose. I can only read for a few minutes without pain. I should not venture to engage to write anything for the public. My work is over--I can do no more, but must silently wait for the end which cannot be far off. Letter after letter meanwhile comes to me which I cannot answer, and people come to see me whom I cannot talk with.” * * * * * Yet he rallied his strength. For it was after this letter that the last beautiful message of his poems--“At Sundown”--printed and not published at that time, was sent out by him in greeting to his friends. * * * * * Whatever his weakness and weariness of body, his prayer, “Let my last days be my best,” was answered. For the soul in him was that shining “light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” After his recovery from “grippe” with which he had been dangerously ill, the writer held a long conversation with him at the home of his cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Cartland of Newburyport. In this conversation he seemed in clearness of vision, wideness of range, strength and grasp of subject, and especially in a certain energy, to carry her back to his days of comparative bodily vigor. All that his soul had had or held, it had and held more firmly than ever, and it had gained that higher outlook spread before the eyes of him whose feet are upon the mountains. Not only did Whittier believe in immortality, but his very presence helped others to believe in it. XXX “And all the windows of my heart I open to the day,”