her nose, as she always did at any mention of
the shop.

Mary returned to her father's room, now silent again with the air of
that which is not. She took from the table the old silver watch. It
went on measuring the time by a scale now useless to its owner. She
placed it lovingly in her bosom, and sat down by the bedside. Already,
through love, sorrow, and obedience, she began to find herself drawing
nearer to him than she had ever been before; already she was able to
recall his last words, and strengthen her resolve to keep them. And,
sitting thus, holding vague companionship with the merely mortal, the
presence of that which was not her father, which was like him only to
remind her that it was not he, and which must so soon cease to resemble
him, there sprang, as in the very footprint of Death, yet another
flower of rarest comfort--a strong feeling, namely, of the briefness of
time, and the certainty of the messenger's return to fetch herself. Her
soul did not sink into peace, but a strange peace awoke in her spirit.
She heard the spring of the great clock that measures the years rushing
rapidly down with a feverous whir, and saw the hands that measure the
weeks and months careering around its face; while Death, like one of
the white-robed angels in the tomb of the Lord, sat watching, with
patient smile, for the hour when he should be wanted to go for her.
Thus mingled her broken watch, her father's death, and Jean Paul's
dream; and the fancy might well comfort her.

I will not linger much more over the crumbling time. It is good for
those who are in it, specially good for those who come out of it
chastened and resolved; but I doubt if any prolonged contemplation of
death is desirable for those whose business it now is to live, and
whose fate it is ere long to die. It is a closing of God's hand upon us
to squeeze some of the bad blood out of us, and, when it relaxes, we
must live the more diligently--not to get ready for death, but to get
more life. I will relate only one thing yet, belonging to this twilight
time.

CHAPTER XII.

MARY'S DREAM.

That night, and every night until the dust was laid to the dust, Mary
slept well; and through the days she had great composure; but, when the
funeral was over, came a collapse and a change. The moment it became
necessary to look on the world as unchanged, and resume former
relations with it, then, first, a fuller sense of her lonely desolation
declared itself. Wh