" whispered she, heavily. "I am almost willing now."

"What is the happiest life here--and Menie's has been happy--to the
blessedness of the rest which I confidently believe awaits her, dear
child?"

"It is not that I grudge to let her go, but that I fear to be left
behind."

"Ay, love! But we must bide God's time. And you will have your
brothers and Rose, and you are young, and time heals sore wounds in
young hearts."

Graeme's head drooped lower. She was weeping unrestrainedly but quietly
now. Her father went on--

"And afterwards you will have many things to comfort you. I used to
think in the time of my sorrow, that its suddenness added to its
bitterness. If it had ever come into my mind that your mother might
leave me, I might have borne it better, I thought. But God knows.
There are some things for which we cannot prepare."

There was a long silence.

"Graeme, I have something which I must say to you," said her father, and
his voice showed that he was speaking with an effort. "If the time
comes--when the time comes--my child, I grieve to give you pain, but
what I have to say had best be said now; it will bring the time no
nearer. My child, I have something to say to you of the time when we
shall no longer be together--" Graeme did not move.

"My child, the backward look over one's life, is so different from the
doubtful glances one sends into the future. I stand now, and see all
the way by which God has led me, with a grieved wonder, that I should
ever have doubted his love and care, and how it was all to end. The
dark places, and the rough places that once made my heart faint with
fear, are, to look back upon, radiant with light and beauty--Mounts of
God, with the bright cloud overshadowing them. And yet, I mind groping
about before them, like a bond man, with a fear and dread unspeakable.

"My child, are you hearing me? Oh! if my experience could teach you! I
know it cannot be. The blessed lesson that suffering teaches, each must
bear for himself; and I need not tell you that there never yet was
sorrow sent to a child of God, for which there is no balm. You are
young; and weary and spent as you are to-night, no wonder that you think
at the sight, of the deep wastes you may have to pass, and the dreary
waters you may have to cross. But there is no fear that you will be
alone, dear, or that He will give you anything to do, or bear, and yet
withhold the needed strength. Are you hearing