y, and, Bob dear, when Easter comes and you see
it a-burstin' out in all its beauty, then think o' me and the children."
"So also is the resurrection of the dead.... It is sown in dishonour, it
is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power." "For
if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which
sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him!" Them were the very two tex's
she said to me, and then she says: "The nex' time you'll see me, Bob,
will be in my body o' glory! Unless you foller me first, but I can't
help thinking," she says, "that the Resurrection mayn't be far off!" And
so she left me!'

[Illustration]

There was a pause. Bob wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, then put
Olive down from his knees and walked across to his flower-pots.

The children followed him silently, and peeped over the edge of the
pots, only to see bare brown earth, and their faces fell at the sight.

[Illustration]

Bob turned to them with a smile: 'This here big pot in the middle is my
wife's lily; I set to work when she went, and got four other o' the same
kind o' bulb and planted them in these smaller pots. This one is
Bessie's, that one is Nellie's, and the others are just Bob's and
Harry's. Well, all that winter I goes to my graves in the churchyard,
and comes back to these pots, and I shakes my head over them all, and
couldn't get no comfort nohow. But shall I ever forget a-comin' into my
kitchen on Easter Sunday, and seein' the sun shine in upon five pure
white lilies! I just fell a-sobbin' on my knees beside them. "Lord," I
says, "I knows as certain sure as I sees these lilies now, and remembers
all the silence and darkness that came upon them from the time they were
put in the earth, that Thou wilt give me back my dear ones ten thousand
times more beautiful than ever I saw 'em here! And if their Easter will
come a little later, 'tis just as sure!" Ay, little ones, and for three
years the Lord has delighted my soul by bringin' up these lilies at
Easter time, just to tell me that my graves is goin' to be opened like
the Lord's Himself, and I'm a-goin' to see my family again. The devil
himself may tempt and try one in the winter, but away he goes in the
spring, when every bit o' this blessed earth is preaching the
resurrection to us!'

Much of this was above the children's heads, but Roland said, after a
minute's thought, 'Will dead people come up out of the ground like the
flowers?'

'Ay, M