A discoloration of the ice attracted my attention, and as I looked it seemed to retreat into the solid mass. There was something not ice within it, which grew more and more distinct as I gazed, until at last I plainly distinguished the form of my grandmother lying as then when my aunt made me touch her face. A few yards further on lay the body of my uncle, as I saw him in his coffin. His face was dead white in the midst of the cold clear ice, his eyes closed, and his arms straight by his side. He lay like an alabaster king upon his tomb. It _was_ he, I thought, but he would never speak to me more--never look at me---never more awake. There lay all that was left of him--the cold frozen memory of what he had been, and would never be again. I did not weep. I only knew somehow in my dream that life was all a wandering in a frozen cave, where the faces of the living were dark with the coming corruption, and the memories of the dead, cold and clear and hopeless evermore, alone were lovely. I walked further; for the ice might possess yet more of the past--all that was left me of life. And again I stood and gazed, for, deep within, I saw the form of Charley--at rest now, his face bloodless, but not so death-like as my uncle’s. His hands were laid palm to palm over his bosom, and pointed upwards, as if praying for comfort where comfort was none: here at least were no flickerings of the rainbow fancies of faith and hope and charity! I gazed in comfortless content for a time on the repose of my weary friend, and then went on, inly moved to see what further the ice of the godless region might hold. Nor had I wandered far when I saw the form of Mary, lying like the rest, only that her hands were crossed on her bosom. I stood, wondering to find myself so little moved. But when the ice drew nigh me, and would have closed around me, my heart leaped for joy; and when the heat of my lingering life repelled it, my heart sunk within me, and I said to myself: ‘Death will not have me. I may not join her even in the land of cold forgetfulness: I may not even be nothing _with_ her.’ The tears began to flow down my face, like the thin veil of water that kept ever flowing down the face of the ice; and as I wept, the water before me flowed faster and faster, till it rippled in a sheet down the icy wall. Faster and yet faster it flowed, falling, with the sound as of many showers, into the runnel below, which rushed splashing and gurgling away from the foot of the vanishing wall. Faster and faster it flowed, until the solid mass fell in a foaming cataract, and swept in a torrent across the cave. I followed the retreating wall through the seething water at its foot. Thinner and thinner grew the dividing mass; nearer and nearer came the form of my Mary. ‘I shall yet clasp her,’ I cried; ‘her dead form will kill me, and I too shall be inclosed in the friendly ice. I shall not be with her, alas! but neither shall I be