pale; and the voice that had been always something mournful, breathed
lower and sadder still from the too perfect whiteness of her breast. No
need--no fear--to tell her that she was about to die. Sweet whispers had
sung it to her in her sleep--and waking she knew it in the look of the
piteous skies. But she spoke not to her parents of death more than she
had often done--and never of her own. Only she seemed to love them with
a more exceeding love--and was readier, even sometimes when no one was
speaking, with a few drops of tears. Sometimes she disappeared--nor,
when sought for, was found in the woods about the hut. And one day that
mystery was cleared; for a shepherd saw her sitting by herself on a
grassy mound in a nook of the small solitary kirkyard, a long mile off
among the hills, so lost in reading the Bible, that shadow or sound of
his feet awoke her not; and, ignorant of his presence, she knelt down
and prayed--for a while weeping bitterly--but soon comforted by a
heavenly calm--that her sins might be forgiven her!

One Sabbath evening, soon after, as she was sitting beside her parents
at the door of their hut, looking first for a long while on their faces,
and then for a long while on the sky, though it was not yet the stated
hour of worship, she suddenly knelt down, and leaning on their knees,
with hands clasped more fervently than her wont, she broke forth into
tremulous singing of that hymn which from her lips they never heard
without unendurable tears:

"The hour of my departure's come,
I hear the voice that calls me home;
At last, O Lord, let trouble cease,
And let thy servant die in peace!"

They carried her fainting to her little bed, and uttered not a word to
one another till she revived. The shock was sudden, but not unexpected,
and they knew now that the hand of death was upon her, although her eyes
soon became brighter and brighter, they thought, than they had ever been
before. But forehead, cheeks, lips, neck, and breast, were all as white,
and, to the quivering hands that touched them, almost as cold, as snow.
Ineffable was the bliss in those radiant eyes; but the breath of words
was frozen, and that hymn was almost her last farewell. Some few words
she spake--and named the hour and day she wished to be buried. Her lips
could then just faintly return the kiss, and no more--a film came over
the now dim blue of her eyes--the father listened for her breath--and
then the mother took