silent city, and went to the parsonage.

* * * * *

The sun had gone down,--the night was coming on. I found Aaron pacing
the verandah with impatient steps. He asked where I had been. I told
him.

"It is very well that you are going so soon," he said,--"you are getting
decidedly ghostly. Will you take a walk with me?"

I was thankful for the occasion. As might have been expected, Aaron
chose the way that led to the solemn old house. I was amused.

"Where are you going?" I questioned.

"To inquire after our early-morning patient," he said.

"And not to see Mrs. Aaron Wilton?"

Aaron looked the least mite retributive, as he said,--

"Anna, there are mysteries in life."

"As, why Aaron was chosen before Moses," I could not help suggesting.
Sophie had had an opportunity of being Mrs. Moses, instead of Mrs.
Aaron.

"Sophie's wise; you are not, Anna, I fear."

"Your fear may be the beginning of my wisdom, Aaron: I hope so."

With the exception of a return to the subject on which Aaron had
questioned me at breakfast, and on which he elicited no further
information from me, nothing of interest occurred until we were within
the place that held Sophie's pearly self.

She had been a shower of sunshine, letting fall gold and silver drops
through all the house. I saw them, heard their sweet glade-like music
rippling everywhere, the moment that I went in.

Mr. Axtell was pacing the hall in the evening twilight, and the little
of lamp-lustre that was shed into it.

He looked passively calm, heroically enduring, as we went past him. From
his eyes came scintillations of a joy whose root is not in our planet.

He simply said,--

"Mrs. Wilton is with my sister; she will be glad to see you."

We went on. Sophie had made a very nest of repose in the sick-room. Miss
Axtell looked so comfortable, so untired of life, so changed from the
first glimpse I had had of her, when I thought her face might be such as
would be found under Dead-Sea waves. There was no more of the anxious
unrest. She spoke to Mr. Wilton, thanking him for the "good gift," she
named Sophie, that he had lent to her.

Miss Lettie called me to her. She wished to say something to me only. I
bent my head to listen.

"I am ill," she said,--"better just now, but I feel that it will be
weeks before I shall leave this place; it is good for me to be here, but
this troubles me,--I don't like to think that I must take care of it;