bright flush of gladness and delight. "I shail see him to-day," she half murmured to herself, in her low, musical undertone; "he shall see how sweet and fresh I have kept them for him." And with that springing sense of coming joy, she raised herself and began to gather back the long tresses of her brown hair. But why were her eyes so hot and smarting - why did her head ache so why were her lips so parched - how came that burning feel on her forehead, and that dizzy faintness when she tried to look around her? And what was the meaning of that white handkerchief, crushed up and pressed tight together, and wet even still with tears, that lay beside her pillow?

Then, upon the fresh, sunshiny morning stillness, a keen, sharp, glittering, sword-like sound was laid. It was the railway whistle, cutting up along the Marbrook valley; and as it plunged into the Braeton woods, breaking and hissing, and moaning with a wild, uncertain sob. Then Maud remembered it all.

Oh! that first waking up to life again, after grief has been laid to rest by sleep! that

dim, vague, haunting consciousness of something wrong, something that will not at first shape itself into reality, but flickers before us, ghost-like and uncertain, until we strain our eyes to look upon it, and then through the clouds and mists of halfdeparted dreams, it struggles out into fearful, agonising form! Oh, the terrible re-appearing of the fact which we had hoped might be nothing more than a mere fancy, a vision of the night, to be cleared away by morning sunshine; the spectral thing which we would so fain put away, but yet it stalks before us, and claims, day by day, to be taken up again and hugged to our hearts in all its icy, deadening coldness; until at last we could almost wish to waken no more, if such waking must always bring with it this never-sleeping presence of our grief. Maud clasped her hands tight and fast together, and then turned wearily back upon her pillow, to gather strength to battle once more with the terrible reality of death.

Let no one think, who has been called to face the awful front of suffering, that one little hour of prayer, how earnest soever and heartfelt it may have been, how instinct with all faith and

humility, can ever wholly exorcise the past, or bar it from often and again rising upon us with a power and vividness which nothing but Almighty strength can enable us to bear. Let no one think that, having bowed in lowliest submission to the All-ruling Will, and laid away our treasures from our sight into the keeping of infinite love, to behold them again no more in this world, memory loses her prerogative, and the heart its power of suffering. Let them not think that any force of resignation or self-abnegation can entirely blot out a past which God intends should be ever before us, for chastening and purifying. Let them rather steady themselves to meet, day by day, the awful presence of their grief, and to walk silently, reverently-it may be for months, it may be for years, it may be for a lifetime-hand in hand with the angel of discipline, beneath that cloud, which elsewhere, if not here, shall surely descend upon them in a gentle, refreshing rain. As it will do upon all

As it did upon Maud. who wait patiently for it.

For there is no con

secration so noble as that of heaven-sent, heaven

sustained sorrow; albeit we shrink ignorantly from its burning seal;-no rest so utter, so blessed as waits for those whom He has made perfect through suffering.

It is a merciful thing to have work to do— work for head, and heart, and hand-work that shall win thought for awhile from its saddened resting-place, and send it forth kind and careful for the weal of others. Maud had never had time to be idle, even when all life smiled in sunshine before her; still less now, when the sudden sweeping away of her earthly future had left a blank which nothing but action, earnest and healthful, could fill. She took Stephen's flowers carefully out of the glass in which she had arranged them only one little day before, and laid them away in her desk; and then prepared for her usual round of daily duties, the pattern of what her whole life must be now. Not much room for thought, that might come by-and-by. The only thing at present, next to prayer itself, was to act, and to act, and to act; for in action only could she find rest.

Perhaps, more than any ever think, it is so for

us all. Perhaps what we want for quiet and contentment is simply work to do; something that shall take us out of ourselves, setting us beyond the sphere of our little joys, and sorrows, and anxieties, out upon that great field of human life where so many wait for help and comfort; something which shall join the separate tones of our individual selves with those of others round us, and so make up the grand, full, sweet harmony of love, the veritable music of the spheres, which, like that sung of by the olden poets, does indeed often escape our mortal ears, simply because we are too selfish to listen or take our part in its harmony.

They brought Stephen Roden home to Braeton to bury him. Death had dealt very gently with him, not marring the rugged, manly form that was once so strong, or sweeping from the pale face one trait of its bravery and sweetness. Very quickly, very suddenly, with hardly room for one moment of fear or terror, he must have gone home; crossing, with a single step, that little stream over which most men weary with pain