hair fell about her
bending face, and she said, although her lips did not move, "To each, in
his degree, the cup is given. Oh, Father! strengthen each to drain it and
believe!"

She rose quietly and folded the paper, with the loving care and lingering
delay with which a mother smooths the shroud that wraps her baby. She
tied it with a pure white ribbon, so that it looked not unlike a bridal
gift; and pressing her lips to it long and silently, she laid it in the
old drawer. There it still remained. The paper was as white, the ribbon
was as pure as ever. Only the flowers were withered. But her heart was
not a flower.

"Well, Aunt Martha," said she, several months after the death of old
Christopher Burt, "I really think you are coming back to this world
again."

The young woman smiled, while the older one busily drove her needle.

"Why," continued Amy, "here is a white collar; and you have actually
smiled at least six times in as many months!"

The older woman still said nothing. The old sadness was in her eyes, but
it certainly had become more natural--more human, as it were--and the
melodramatic gloom in which she had hitherto appeared was certainly less
obvious.

"Amy," she said at length, "God leads his erring children through the
dark valley, but he does lead them--he does not leave them. I did not
know how deeply I had sinned until I heard the young man Summerfield,
who came to see me even in this room."

She looked up and about, as if to catch some lingering light upon the
wall.

"And it was Lawrence Newt's preacher who made me feel that there was hope
even for me."

She sewed on quietly.

"I thank God for those two men; and for one other," she added, after a
little pause.

Amy only looked, she did not ask who.

"Lawrence Newt," said Aunt Martha, calmly looking at Amy--"Lawrence Newt,
who came to me as a brother comes to a sister, and said, 'Be of good
cheer!' Amy, what is the matter with you and Lawrence Newt?"

"How, aunty?"

"How many months since you met here?"

"It was several months ago, aunty."

Aunt Martha sat quietly sewing, and after some time said,

"He is no longer a young man."

"But, Aunt Martha, he is not old."

Still sewing, the grave woman looked at the burning cheeks of her younger
companion. Amy did not speak.

The older woman continued: "When you and he went from this room months
ago I supposed you would be his wife before now."

Still Amy did not speak. It was not