her, and went on:

"Starry eyes--that's just what they are, I think; and I can imagine how
lovingly they look at me, and how pityingly, too. There is always
something so sad in your voice when you speak to me, and I say to
myself, 'That's how Lucy's eyes look at me, just as her voice sounds
when it says brother Robbie.' I shall know you in heaven, the moment you
come, and I shall be waiting for you, and when I see your eyes I shall
say, 'That is sister Lucy, come at last!' Oh, it will be such joy!--no
night, no blindness, no pain, and you with me again as you have been
here, only there, I shall be the guide, and lead you through the green
pastures beside the still waters, where never-fading flowers are
blooming sweeter than the orange blossoms near our window."

Lucy was sobbing hysterically, with her head in his lap, while he
smoothed the dark braids of her hair, and tried to comfort her by asking
if she ought not to be glad that he was going where there was no more
night for him, and where she, too, would join him in a little while.

"It is not that!" Lucy cried, "though it breaks my heart to think of you
gone forever. How can I live without you? What shall I do when my
expiatory work is finished?"

"Expiatory work?" Robin repeated, questioningly. "What do you mean? What
have you to expiate?--you, the noblest, most unselfish sister in the
world!"

"Much, much. Oh, Robbie, I cannot let you die with this upon my mind,
even if the confession turn your love for me into hate--and you do love
me, I have made your life a little less sad than it might have been but
for me."

"Yes, sister, you have made my life so full of happiness that, darkened
as it is, I would like to cling to it longer, though I know heaven is so
much better."

"Thank you, Robbie--thank you for that" Lucy said; then, lifting up her
head, and looking straight into her brother's face, she continued: "You
say you have a faint recollection of the grass, and the flowers, and
the trees in the park. Have you also any remembrance, however slight,
how I looked when we were little children playing together at home?"

"I don't know for sure," Robin replied, while for an instant a deep
flush stained his pale cheeks: "I don't know for sure. Sometimes out of
those dim shadows of the past which I have struggled so hard to retain,
there comes a vision of a little girl--or, rather, there is a picture
which comes before my mind more distinct than the grass, and th