ngel knocked, lay in one corner
of an old and dilapidated room, on a pallet of straw. No soft hand
wandered caressingly among his dark locks, or cooled with its cold
touch the fever of his forehead. The dim, flickering rays of the
tallow candle wandered over the features now grown stark and rigid
with the death-chill. No grief-printed face bent in anguish above
him; no eye watched for the latest breath; no ear for the dying
word; but through the half-open door, came to the ear of the dying
boy the coarse laugh of the inebriate--the jest of the vile, and the
frightful blasphemies of those whose way is the way of death.

None saw the last life-light, as it broke into the dark, spiritual
eyes of the boy. None saw the smile that played like the light
around the lips of a seraph, about his blue and cold lips, as they
spoke exceeding joyfully, "Father! Father, I have called and you
have heard me; I am coming to you, coming now; for the angels beckon
me;" and the pale clay on that sunken pallet was all that remained
of the boy.

Together they met, those two children who had stood together in the
earthly courts of the Most High, and whom the angel had
simultaneously called from the earth, beneath the shining
battlements of "the city of God." The white wings of the
warden-angels, who stood on its watch-towers, were slowly folded
together, and back rolled the massive gates from the walls of
jasper; and with the great "Godlight" streaming outward, and amid
the sound of archangel's harp and seraph's lyre, the ministering
angels came forth. They did not ask the child-spirits there, if
their earthly homes had been among the high and the honourable; they
did not ask them if broad lands had been their heritage, and
sparkling coffers their portion; if their paths had lain by pleasant
waters, and animals followed their biddings; but alike they led
them--she, the daughter of wealth and earthly splendour, whose
forehead the breezes might not visit too roughly, and whose pathway
had been bordered with flowers and gilded with sunshine; and he, the
heir of poverty, whose portion had been want, and his inalienable
heritage, suffering; whose path had known no pleasant places; whose
life had had no brightness within that glorious city. They placed
bright crowns, alike woven from the fragrant branches of the
far-spreading "Tree of Life," around their spirit-brows; they decked
them alike in white robes, whose lustre many ages shall not dim;
al