only of the aged woman, and entered hastily yet stealthily in. No one was to be seen in the front room, and I found my way to the one at the back. There were no shutters to the window, and the light streamed through the thin white curtain; it fell on the face of the dead. Beside sat the grandmother, looking the corpse which she became in the course of that night. She never spoke after she felt her child's hand grow cold and stiff in her own. There she lay, that beloved and beautiful girl, her bright hair shining around her, and her face so pale, but with such strange sweetness. I bent down to kiss her, but the touch was death. But why should I go on; I had lost my gentle companion for ever.
I have told the history of my childhood, childhood which images forth our after life. Even such has been mine—it has but repeated what it learnt from the first, Sorrow, Beauty, Love and Death.
THE END.
B. BENSLEY, PRINTERS, ANDOVER.
