ng and prayers and tears.

I had dreamed out my dream: it was glorious while it lasted, but I
wakened to a reality that was as cruel as it was unexpected.

Emma was a mere child when I left Heartsease: she had grown into the
living image of her sister. Whenever Emma spoke I seemed to hear the
voice and feel the presence of the one who had been gone a whole week
when I came in search of her. I entered the stricken home: father,
mother and maiden aunt--that good angel of all homes--were to me as if
I had parted with them but yesterday. We sat in silence for a time: it
seemed to me that if any one spoke there the very walls of the house
would distill sorrowful drops. Our hearts were brimming, our lips were
quivering, with inexpressible grief. It was a solemn and a holy hour;
the night closed in about us with unutterable tenderness; the summer
stars shed down their radiant beams.

The vesper-song of some invisible bird called me into the garden, and
I walked there alone. Did I walk utterly alone? A spirit was with me.
I wandered out to the gate and drew my portmanteau from its
hiding-place: I placed my hand upon the latch; the gate swung easily,
but I paused a moment. Shall I go or shall I stay? asked my heart:
"Stay," said the spirit that was with me. I returned to the house and
joined in the evening meal: sorrow sat at the board with us, but not a
hopeless sorrow. The magnetism of her touch had not yet left that
home: it never need, it never will leave it, for it is treasured
there. Her piano was closed, and I would not open it: any harmony
would have been too harsh for the hallowed silence of the place. Her
books, her pictures, her dainty needlework, _her words_--all that had
been a part of her life--still lived, though she had left us.

Those were sweet days to me. Emma and I went side by side to the old
haunts--to most of them, but not all, for there were some I cared no
longer to revisit. Before we had compassed the narrow limits of
Heartsease I began to wonder if there was a stone left that would give
back to me the impression of my early days: they all told another
story now, and most of them a sad one. Even the school-room was as a
dead thing, though I sat on the old benches and mounted the rostrum
whereon I was wont to "speak my piece" with much trepidation of spirit
and an inexplicable weakness of the knees. I wrote my name on the wall
in an obscure corner, simply because I didn't want it to be stricken
off f