le calamity that had
befallen, but just now, if she kept still it would not hurt so much.

She was filled with wonder at her mother's courage. Even in the first
moments of anguish she showed not a moment of wavering faith. And she
was more filled with wonder at Grandpa. Neil had been Grandpa's
special pride, and she was afraid of the result of the news. She went
to the bright corner of the kitchen where he sat and tried tremblingly
to make him understand, holding back her own grief by main force, that
she might tell it gently. He made no outcry, spoke no word of grief;
but for an hour afterwards he sat quite still in deep thought, and she
heard him saying over and over to himself, as though trying to grasp
the magnitude of his sorrow, "Both o' them! Not the two o' them,
surely?" And then after pondering a while, "Aye, the two o' them!"

But when she put him to bed that night, dumb and sick with anguish
herself, she could not but notice that Grandpa was acting strangely.
He had an air of suppressed excitement, as though he were hiding some
good news. She did not guess what it was until she had left him, and
overheard him saying, "Aye, aye, I'll see them all the sooner. All the
sooner!" in a tone of exultation. She did not hand him the hymn book,
thinking he would not want to sing, but when she peeped in later to see
if it were time to take away the lamp, she was amazed to hear him
singing very softly and low, lest any overhear him, but singing,
nevertheless, in the house of mourning, the Hindmost Hymn,

"On the other side of Jordan, in the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the tree of life is blooming, there is rest for you."

For Grandpa had travelled far on the upward road, and Christina did not
realise that death was a small incident in the life of one who stood
just at the door into the other world.

In the morning when she went in and ran up his window blind to the top
to let in the sunlight, he was lying as she had left him the night
before, with the little orange-covered book held loosely in his cold
hands. For Grandpa had sung the Hindmost Hymn for the last time and
was even now singing the First Hymn in a new Book away in the sweet
fields of Eden, where there is no more death, neither sorrow nor
crying, neither is there any more pain.

Christina had no time for her own grief, so busy she was comforting her
mother, cheering Uncle Neil, sustaining John and writing consoling
letters to the absent o