r an _instant_, _day or
night_--promise."

And Theodore, ignoring all the strangeness of his position, promised,
and remained in the house, the watcher-guard and helper of more than
Pliny.

Not for an instant did he lose sight of his friend; through all the
trying ordeal of the following days he was constantly present. Even in
Pliny's private interviews with his mother, Theodore hovered near, and
his was the first face that Pliny met when he came to the door to issue
any orders. It was Theodore's hand that held open the carriage door when
the son came to follow his father to his final resting-place, and it
was Theodore's arm that was linked in his when he walked down the hall
on his return.

These were sad things to Theodore in another way. Despite all Mr.
Hastings' coldness to him, he had never been able to lose sight of the
memory of those days, now long gone by, in which the rich man had in a
sense been his protector and friend. He could not forget that it was
through _him_ that his first step upward had been taken. Aside from his
mother, Mr. Hastings was perhaps the first person for whom he felt a
touch of love. He could not forget him--could not cease to mourn for
him.

There was, only a week after this, another funeral. There was no long
line of coaches, and no display of magnificence this time--only a quiet,
slow-moving procession following the unplumed hearse. Only one store in
the city was closed, and not a hundred people knew for whom the bell
tolled that day; but did ever truer mourners or more bleeding hearts
follow a coffin to its final resting-place than were those who gathered
around that open grave, and saw the body of Grandma McPherson laid to
rest for awhile, awaiting the call of the great Maker, when he should
bid it come up to meet its glorified spirit, and dwell in that wonderful
_Forever_!

The messenger came suddenly to her, in the quiet of a moonlight night,
when all the household were asleep; and none who saw her in the morning,
with that blessed look upon her face, that told of earth receding and
heaven coming in, could doubt but that when in the silent night she
heard the Master whisper, "Come up higher," she made answer, "Even so,
Lord Jesus."

So they laid her in the silent city on the hill, very near the spot
where, by and by, there towered and blazed Mr. Hastings' monument; but
when they set up _her_ white headstone they marked on it the blessed
words: "So he giveth his beloved sl