were there, now shook out their light tresses in the wind, and how the many-tinted, sweetscented flowers smiled at us from their ferny beds! Summer had come in all its beauty, but there was no summer for us two. I was so glad the trees had grown thick and green between us and the grey gables of Glinton Manor, the home that was to have been Maud's. She has never seen it since that fatal day. Blessed leaves that grow up between us and our sorrows, giving us cool shade in place of stinging memories!

How different Maud is from me; how much nobler! In my first great grief I put away all comfort, and folded it tightly to my heart. There was no beauty to me then in the autumn leaves, or the purpling sky, or the thousand tints and forms of nature around me. Everything was darkened and shadowed by that one great, overhanging thought. She is so different; so meek, so patient, so willing to be comforted. Her eyes see love and beauty yet, where mine find nothing but gloom. How she lingered to admire the mossy sprays that carpeted the wood, and to look into the flowers' bright eyes, until her

own were gladdened; and how tenderly she removed some dead old year's leaves-perhaps the very leaves that fell on Philip Lowe and me last autumn-which were hiding the sunlight from a little white windflower! My kind sister Maud!

By and by, when we had walked up and down many a time through those thick, green, leafy aisles, we sat to rest upon an old trunk, just where we could see the Mar brook sparkling past the tall ferns, and watch the silver sheen of the lake beyond. And there she spoke to me, in her quiet, simple way, of the great grief which had come upon her.

"Mabel," she said, "I would not have him come back again. Do you know the last words he said to me were -It is only a little while, Maud, and I shall see you again — only a little

while.' And it is only a little while; I shall see him again, Mabel, before long, I know I shall.”

Ah! how calmly we can talk of any grief that has no sin in it! I looked at her as she sat there, with such a heavenly peace throned on her forehead, and such an upward, waiting look

in her eyes eyes with less of earth in them than

heaven

and a strange fear shot through me. Was it indeed to be so? Was she too going to leave me? And I held her tightly as we sat there, more tightly than I had ever done in all my life before. And I said, "Maud, Maud, you must not go. Stay and comfort me, for I too have known sorrow; it has come to me, Maud, it has indeed."

And then I told her all.

She spoke no word for long. Only she looked at me with those quiet eyes of hers, so full of sorrow, so full of love! When I come to die, I hope such a look as that may be the last I shall meet. I would like my last earthly memory to be of a face like Maud's, that, having its reflection on my spirit, I might pass to that other world where they are all like her. But when I told her of the peace which had come down upon me after that bitter strife of the rest which grew with the thought that God had sent it all she drew

closer up to me, and said in her quiet under

"So He bringeth them to the haven where they would be."

I have that scene before me now. I shall never forget it, never. The summer air rippling up the wood with a wave-like whispering sound; the slant rays of sunlight quivering down to the grass at our feet; the glade leading up to Glinton Manor streaked with soft, cool shadows, and opening here and there to let in the faint blue outline of the distant hills; the heavy pine and cedar branches stretching out sharp and black like groined arches upon the green roof of leaves above us; the bright coral-like red stems of the young sycamores gleaming in the sunshine; the flowers, many tinted, many scented, holding the light lovingly within their waving bells; the musical, soft chime of the little Mar brook, as it flickered through the copse and fern; the cool swish of the wind through the fir trees; the lulling murmur of the wood pigeons; the soft rocking motion of the great bracken leaves; the glitter of the sunshine on the blades of grass; the blue sky glinting in through interlacing boughs; the soft haze of summer air upon the distance:

and, over all, Maud's voice saying, what was blessed truth for us both, "Then are they glad, because they be quiet."

For there was no sting now in either of our hearts. We felt, as we came home hand in hand through Lingold Wood that day, that the bitterness of death was past. We knew that if, for both of us, the brightest happiness of life lay behind, as indeed it did, so also did its keenest sorrow; and that all coming years, whether they brought with them light or shadow, would only be leading us on with gentle hand to our home, to that great solemn future of heaven, which we had both learned to think of now as the goal of all our hopes, the true rest and Sabbath of the soul.

I have found that it is great gain when we can look upon all earthly happiness as apart from ourselves, as not in itself necessary to our peace; when we can give thanks for those who are rejoicing in hope, yet envy not their joy; and when, being gentle through suffering ourselves, we can touch all other sorrow with a gentler hand. And come what may, life will always be