pirit to a brighter and a better world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.

THE INTRUSION.

As soon as the breath had left her child's body, Mrs. Wentworth
removed the corpse from her lap and laid it on the bed; than standing
aside of it, gazed upon all that remained of her little daughter. Not
a tear, not a sigh, not a groan denoted that she felt any grief at her
bereavement. Except a nervous twitching of her mouth, her features
wore a cold and rigid appearance, and her eye looked dull and glassy.
She spoke not a word to those around her who yet lived. Her little boy
was unnoticed, no other object but the dead body appeared to meet her
view.

There are moments when the fountains of grief become dried up. It was
so with Mrs. Wentworth. The sight of her dead child's face--beautiful
in death--for it wore a calm and placid exterior, too life-like for
death, too rigid for life, awoke no emotion in her bosom; nor did the
knowledge that the infant would soon be placed in the grave, and be
forever hidden from the gaze she now placed on it so steadfastly,
cause a single tear drop to gather in her eye, nor a sigh to burst
from her pale and firmly closed lips. And yet, there raged within her
breast a volcano, the violence of whose fire would soon exhaust, and
leave her scarred and blasted forever. At that moment it kindled with
a blaze, that scorched her heart, but she felt it not. Her whole being
was transformed into a mass of ruin. She felt not the strain on the
tendrils of her mind; that her overwrought brain was swaying between
madness and reason. She only saw the lifeless lineaments of her
child--the first pledge of her wedded affection--dead before her.

It came to her like a wild dream, a mere hallucination--an imagination
of a distempered mind. She could not believe it. There, on that lowly
bed, her child to die! It was something too horrible for her thoughts,
and though the evidence lay before her, in all its solemn grandeur,
there was something to her eye so unreal and impossible in its silent
magnificence that she doubted its truthfulness.

The old negro saw her misery. She knew that the waters which run with
a mild and silent surface, are often possessed of greater depth, than
those which rush onward with a mighty noise.

"Come missis," she said, placing her hand on Mrs. Wentworth's
shoulder. "De Lord will be done. Nebber mind. He know better what to
do dan we do, and we must all be satisfy wid his works."

Mrs.