in London, was reading the following laconic dispatch
from Allington:

"Stay at home and mind your own business!

"Betsey McPherson"

"Perhaps I did wrong to send it, for maybe the girl likes him after
all," the spinster thought, as she walked back to her house.

But it was too late now, and for the next two or three days she was too
anxious to think of anything except Bessie, who was much worse, and
seemed so weak and unconscious of everything, that the physician looked
very grave, and the clergyman came at Miss McPherson's request, and said
the prayers for the sick, but Bessie did not hear them, for she lay like
one in a deep sleep, scarcely moving or seeming to breathe.

Before leaving the room the clergyman went softly to the bedside to look
at the sick girl, wondering much at the likeness in her face to some one
he had seen before, and wondering too why it should remind him of Hannah
Jerrold, and the night when he went in the wintery storm to hear her
father's confession.

"Poor Hannah!" he said to himself, as he left the house, and walking
slowly across the common to the church-yard, sat down upon a bench near
to a head-stone, which bore this inscription: "Sacred to the memory of
Martha, beloved wife of the Rev. Charles Sanford, who died January 1st,
18--. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord."

Since we last saw him, years ago, the Rev. Charles Sanford had grown an
old man, though he was scarcely sixty-three, an age when many men are in
their prime. There was a stoop in his shoulders as if the burden of life
were heavy, and his hair was as white as snow, while upon his face was a
look which only daily discipline, patiently borne, can ever write upon
the human visage And patiently had he borne it, until he almost forgot
that he was bearing it, and then one day it was removed and by the
lightness and freedom he felt, he knew how heavy it had been.

"Poor Martha!" he said to himself, as he glanced at his shining
coat-sleeves, and the spot on the knee of his pants, which was almost
threadbare, and at his boots, which certainly had not been blacked that
day. "Poor Martha! What would she say if she could see these clothes,
which, though they may not look well, are very comfortable." Then, as
his eye rested upon the word _beloved_, he continued: "Is that a lie, I
wonder, which that marble is telling to the world? If so, it is Martha's
fault, for she wrote her own epitaph, just as she ordered all the