ace for evermore empty--ah, me! at such
a time how great the sorrow grows! Clearly, in choosing a moment
already in itself so funereal, for the obsequies of Nature, they
feared that a man would not find cause enough of sorrow in himself!

The coolest, the busiest of men, however taken up they be with life's
distracting cares, have, at least, their sadder moments. In the dark
wintry morning, in the night that comes on so swift to swallow us up
in its shadow, ten years, nay, twenty years hence, strange feeble
voices will rise up in your heart: "Good morning, dear friend, 'tis
we! You are alive, are working as hard as ever. So much the better!
You do not feel our loss so heavily, and you have learned to do
without us; but we cannot, we never can, do without you. The ranks are
closed, the gap is all but filled. The house that was ours is full,
and we have blessed it. All is well, is better than when your father
carried you about; better than when your little girl said, in her
turn, to you, 'Papa, carry me.' But, lo! you are in tears. Enough,
till we meet again!"

Alas, and are they gone? That wail was sweet and piercing: but was it
just? No. Let me forget myself a thousand times rather than I should
forget them! And yet, cost what it will to say so, say it we must,
that certain traces are fading off, are already less clear to see;
that certain features are not indeed effaced, but grown paler and more
dim. A hard, a bitter, a humbling thought it is, to find oneself so
weak and fleeting, wavering as unremembered water; to feel that in
time one loses that treasure of grief which one had hoped to preserve
for ever. Give it me back, I pray: I am too much bounden to so rich a
fountain of tears. Trace me again, I implore you, those features I
love so well. Could you not help me at least to dream of them by
night?

* * * * *

More than one such prayer is spoken in the month of November. And
amidst the striking of the bells and the dropping of the leaves, they
clear out of church, saying one to another in low tones: "I say,
neighbour; up there lives a woman of whom folk speak well and ill.
For myself, I dare say nothing; but she has power over the world
below. She calls up the dead, and they come. Oh, if she might--without
sin, you know, without angering God--make my friends come to me! I am
alone, as you must know, and have lost everything in this world. But
who knows what this woman is, whether