ft in the child for them to know whether she was aware of her
condition. When they read Prayers, her lips always moved for the
Lord's Prayer and Doxology; and when the clergyman came out from
Winiamac, prayed by her and blessed her, she opened her eyes with a
look of comprehension; and if, according to the custom from the
beginning of her illness, the Psalms and Lessons were not read in her
room, she was uneasy, though she could hardly listen. So came Easter
Eve; and towards evening she was a little revived, and asked Averil
what day it was, then answered, 'I thought it would have been nice to
have died yesterday,'--it was the first time she mentioned death.
Averil told her she was better, but half repented, as the child sank
into torpor again; and Averil, no longer the bewildered girl who had
been so easily led from the death scene, knew the fitful breath and
fluttering pulse, and felt the blank dread stealing over her heart.

Again, however, the child looked up, and murmured, 'You have not read
to-day.' Cora, who had the Bible on her knee, gently obeyed, and read
on, where she was, the morning First Lesson, the same in the American
Church as in our own. Averil, dull with watching and suffering, sat on
dreamily, with the scent of primroses wafted to her, as it were, by the
association of the words, though her power to attend to them was gone.
Before the chapter was over, the doze had overshadowed the little girl
again; and yet, more than once, as the night drew on, they heard her
muttering what seemed like the echo of one of its verses, 'Turn you,
turn you--'

At last, after hours of watching, and more than one vain endeavour of
good Cousin Deborah to lead away the worn but absorbed nurses, the
dread messenger came. Minna turned suddenly in her sister's arms, with
more strength than Averil had thought was left in her, and eagerly
stretched out her arms, while the words so long trembling on her lips
found utterance. 'Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope!
O, Leonard dear! it does not hurt!' But that last word was almost lost
in the gasp--the last gasp. What 'did not hurt' was death without his
sting.

'O, Cora! Was he with her? Is he gone too?' was Averil's cry at the
first moment, as she strained the form of her little comforter for the
last time in her arms.

'And if he is, they are in joy together,' said Cousin Deborah, tenderly
but firmly unloosing Averil's arms, though with the tears runnin