g down
her cheeks. 'Take her away, Cora, and both of you sleep. This dear
lamb is in better keeping than yours.'

Heavy, grievous, was the loss, crushing the grief; but it was such as
to be at its softest and sweetest at Easter, amid the Resurrection
joys, and the budding flowers, though Ella's bitterest fit of weeping
was excited by there being no primroses--the primroses that Minna loved
so much; and her first pleasurable thought was to sit down and write to
her dear 'Mr. Tom' to send her some primrose seed, for Minna's grave.

Minna's grave! Alas! Massissauga had but an untidy desolate-looking
region, with a rude snake fence, all unconsecrated! Cora wanted to
choose a shaded corner in her father's ground, where they might daily
tend the child's earthly resting-place; but Averil shrank from this
with horror; and finally, on one of the Easter holidays, the little
wasted form in its coffin was reverently driven by Philetus to
Winiamac, while the sisters and Cora slowly followed, thinking--the one
of the nameless blood-stained graves of a battle-field; the other
whether an equally nameless grave-yard, but one looked on with a
shudder unmixed with exultation, had opened for the other being she
loved best. 'The Resurrection and the Life.--Yes, had not He made His
grave with the wicked, and been numbered with the transgressors!'

Somehow, the present sorrow was more abundant in such comforts as these
than all the pangs which her heart, grown old in sorrow, had yet
endured.

Yet if her soul had bowed itself to meet sorrow more patiently and
peacefully, it was at the expense of the bodily frame. Already
weakened by the intermittent fever, the long strain of nursing had told
on her; and that hysteric affection that had been so distressing at the
time of her brother's trial recurred, and grew on her with every
occasion for self-restraint. The suspense in which she lived--with one
brother in the camp, in daily peril from battle and disease, the other
in his convict prison--wore her down, and made every passing effect of
climate or fatigue seize on her frame like a serious disorder; and the
more she resigned her spirit, the more her body gave way. Yet she was
infinitely happier. The repentance and submission were bearing fruit,
and the ceasing to struggle had brought a strange calm and acceptance
of all that might be sent; nay, her own decay was perhaps the sweetest
solace and healing of the wearied spirit; and as to