back upon her
pillow,--along sigh breathed through her lips.

"She is faint," said Helen, doubtfully; "bring me the hartshorn, Sophy."

The old woman had started from her place, and was now leaning over her,
looking in her face, and listening for the sound of her breathing.

"She 's dead! Elsie 's dead! My darlin 's dead!" she cried aloud,
filling the room with her utterance of anguish.

Dudley Venner drew her away and silenced her with a voice of authority,
while Helen and an assistant plied their restoratives. It was all in
vain.

The solemn tidings passed from the chamber of death through the family.
The daughter, the hope of that old and honored house, was dead in the
freshness of her youth, and the home of its solitary representative was
hereafter doubly desolate.

A messenger rode hastily out of the avenue. A little after this the
people of the village and the outlying farm-houses were startled by the
sound of a bell.

One,--two,--three,--four,

They stopped in every house, as far as the wavering vibrations reached,
and listened--

five,--six,--seven,--

It was not the little child which had been lying so long at the point of
death; that could not be more than three or four years old--

eight,--nine,--ten,--and so on to fifteen, sixteen,--seventeen,
--eighteen--

The pulsations seemed to keep on,--but it was the brain, and not the
bell, that was throbbing now.

"Elsie 's dead!" was the exclamation at a hundred firesides.

"Eighteen year old," said old Widow Peake, rising from her chair.
"Eighteen year ago I laid two gold eagles on her mother's eyes,--he
wouldn't have anything but gold touch her eyelids,--and now Elsie's to be
straightened,--the Lord have mercy on her poor sinful soul!"

Dudley Venner prayed that night that he might be forgiven, if he had
failed in any act of duty or kindness to this unfortunate child of his,
now freed from all the woes born with her and so long poisoning her soul.
He thanked God for the brief interval of peace which had been granted
her, for the sweet communion they had enjoyed in these last days, and for
the hope of meeting her with that other lost friend in a better world.

Helen mingled a few broken thanks and petitions with her tears: thanks
that she had been permitted to share the last days and hours of this poor
sister in sorrow; petitions that the grief of bereavement might be
lightened to the lonely parent and the faithful old servant.

Old Soph