ncerns us to know. He says your mamma is not there.'

'She is taken away!' I cried, starting up, and with streaming eyes, gazing
on the building which, though I stamped my feet in my distraction, I was
afraid to approach. 'Oh, _is_ mamma taken away? Where is she? Where have
they brought her to?'

I was uttering unconsciously very nearly the question with which Mary,
in the grey of that wondrous morning on which she stood by the empty
sepulchre, accosted the figure standing near.

'Your mamma is alive but too far away to see or hear us. Swedenborg,
standing here, can see and hear her, and tells me all he sees, just as I
told you in the garden about the little boys and the cottage, and the trees
and flowers which you could not see. You believed in when _I_ told you. So
I can tell you now as I did then; and as we are both, I hope, walking on to
the same place just as we did to the trees and cottage. You will surely see
with your own eyes how true the description is which I give you.'

I was very frightened, for I feared that when he had done his narrative we
were to walk on through the wood into that place of wonders and of shadows
where the dead were visible.

He leaned his elbow on his knee, and his forehead on his hand, which
shaded his downcast eyes. In that attitude he described to me a beautiful
landscape, radiant with a wondrous light, in which, rejoicing, my mother
moved along an airy path, ascending among mountains of fantastic height,
and peaks, melting in celestial colouring into the air, and peopled with
human beings translated into the same image, beauty, and splendour. And
when he had ended his relation, he rose, took my hand, and smiling gently
down on my pale, wondering face, he said the same words he had spoken
before--

'Come, dear, let us go.'

'Oh! no, no, _no_--not now,' I said, resisting, and very much frightened.

'Home, I mean, dear. We cannot walk to the place I have described. We can
only reach it through the gate of death, to which we are all tending, young
and old, with sure steps.'

'And where is the gate of death?' I asked in a sort of whisper, as we
walked together, holding his hand, and looking stealthily. He smiled sadly
and said--

'When, sooner or later, the time comes, as Hagar's eyes were opened in the
wilderness, and she beheld the fountain of water, so shall each of us see
the door open before us, and enter in and be refreshed.'

For a long time following this walk I was v