ish you to be my executor. Will you accept the trust?"

Rudolf indicated his willingness in silence.

"Then come with me to my library. The other witnesses are waiting there
now. I have got them together as rapidly as I could, and they are all
honest fellows."

As they were passing through the suite of rooms, Squire John suddenly
stopped Rudolf, and said--

"Look! in this room I heard her laugh for the last time. On that chair
yonder she lost her shawl--it is there still. On that table is a pair of
gloves, the last she ever wore. Here she used to sit when she sketched.
There's the piano, still open--a _fantasia_ lies, you see, on the
music-stand. If she should come back again, eh?"

And now he opened the door of a room illuminated by candles--Rudolf
shrunk back.

"Old friend, that's not a fit place to enter. Surely you have lost
yourself in your own house! That is your wife's bedroom."

"I know, but I can never pass it without going in. And now I mean to
have a last look at it, for to-morrow I shall have it walled up. Look,
everything remains just as she left it. She did not die in this
room--don't be alarmed! That door yonder leads to the garden. Look,
everything is in its old place--there the lamp by which she used to
read, on the table a half-written letter, which nobody has read. A
hundred times have I entered the room, and not a word of that letter
have I read. To me it is holy. In front of the bed are her two little
embroidered slippers, so tiny that they look as if they had been made
for a child. On the table is an open prayer-book, between the open
leaves of which are an iris and an amaranth and a maple leaf. She
greatly loved those flowers."

"Let us go away from hence, let us go away," urged Rudolf. "It pains me
to hear you talk so."

"It pains you, eh?--it does me good. I have sat here for days together,
and have called to mind every word she said. I see her before me
everywhere, asleep, awake, smiling, sorrowful--I see her resting her
pretty head on the pillows, I see her sleeping, I see her dying----"

"Oh! come, come away!"

"We will go, Rudolf. And I shall never come back again. To-morrow a
smooth wall will be here in the place of the door, and iron shutters
will cover all the windows. I feel that I ought not to seek her here any
more. Elsewhere, elsewhere I will seek her: we will dwell together in
another room. Let us go, let us go!"

And smilingly, without a tear, like one who is preparin