provide the coarsest food and clothing by their own unaided
efforts. I would be glad to give what means and influence I may
possess for so worthy an object, and I trust you to carry out these
my last wishes.

I can write no more. God be with and comfort you, my own, own love.

That was all. The pen dropped from the nerveless grasp. Clemence bent
her head wearily on the table, and fell into a trance-like slumber.

The night waned. The dawn of the New Year found the pale sleeper with
her golden head still pillowed on her arm, and the last words that the
slender fingers would ever trace, waiting for the coming of one to break
the spell of silence, that had hushed the pale-browed sleeper into
everlasting rest.

CONCLUSION.

"Dead! dead! dead!" moaned Ulrica Hardyng, bending in agony over the
lifeless form, and looking vainly for some answering gleam of
recognition in the blue eyes, that had ever beamed upon her with glances
of love and sympathy.

And this was the end of all these months of working and waiting, which
was to be crowned with a glorious fruition that had filled all hearts
with joyous anticipation.

But there was no time for idle sorrow. A little white-robed figure, with
great wild eyes, and tangled curls falling over dimpled shoulders, stole
into the room, and flung herself at the feet of the still figure, that
drooped now in the woman's arms; and then a cry rang through the house,
so fraught with anguish, that people hurrying by, in the early morning
light, stood with startled faces, and questioned as to its cause, then
reverently entered the house of woe.

Below, in the little parlor of the cottage, they laid all that was
mortal of Clemence Graystone, and there, he who had hastened to meet the
loved one, passed the long hours of that New Year's day alone with his
dead.

Grief, like joy, should be sacred from stranger eyes, and we will not
linger over the scene, but glide softly from the place that has been
made desolate by the dread presence of the destroyer.

They buried the young teacher by the side of the child she had loved in
life, and whose sad dream was thus fulfilled. The people whom she had
come among, only to be slighted, and more than that, persecuted with
malignant energy, united at her death in awarding the meed of praise
they had denied her in life. It mattered little, though, to one who had
left the cares and trials of earth behind, what remorseful t