igh upon the horizon, it colored them in gorgeous
array and threw them out in wonderful shapes and sharp relief against a
clearing sky. Castles towered on one side, vast turrets standing forth
above their walls; on the other, banks of tinted vapor formed a huge
cloud-seat.

The little girl, calm, though her heart was torn with pain, looked out
with her mother upon the dying glories. She had often before in her life
seen that changing panorama which, thrown up one moment, melted into
nothingness the next. At night she had learned to kneel with her face
that way,--to the great billows that always seemed to her a seat in the
sky, that were always something more than mere vapor. She could pray
better when, long after sundown, they hung above the horizon, robbed of
their colors but still glorious. And there had grown up in her mind the
comforting thought that on those very billows was God's throne, and from
them, at sunset, He looked down upon that part of the earth that was
sinking into the night, and blessed it and told it farewell. She even
thought she could see His face in the heavens sometimes,--His flowing
white robes, and the amethyst stool upon which He rested his feet.

As the sun dropped behind the prairie, the cloud-throne loomed forth
against the blue more vividly than ever. The little girl kept her eyes
dumbly upon it, watching the crimson and gold slowly fade to royal
purple where the King sat.

"Remember what I said, pet lamb," her mother whispered. She could not
see, yet she was still holding the little girl's hands firmly. "Remember
what I told you to do."

The little girl could not answer; she could only bow her head in reply.
Tearless, she waited beside the bed, where, for the second time, Life
was striving with Death,--and was to lose. There was no sound in the
room until there came a last whisper, "Pray."

The little girl slipped down from the edge of the bed to the carpet and
knelt toward the west. A collie trotted up to her and licked her cheek.
She put him gently aside. She was trying to think of something to say in
behalf of her mother to Him who, even now, was taking His farewell look.
At last a thought came to her, and her lips moved to speak aloud the
only petition she could think of:

"O God," she pleaded, raising her eyes to where the seat, marvelous in
purple and burning gold, loomed high over the prairie against the sky,
"please be good to my mother."

And as she knelt there, strong in