d when the question was repeated,
said slowly:

"No, I like it." After a little: "Don't you remember, Mattie, how
beautiful the moonlight seemed? It seemed to promise happiness--and
love--but it never come for us. It makes me dream of the past now--just
as it did of the future then; an' the whip-poor-wills, too--"

The night was perfectly beautiful, such a night as makes dying an
infinite sorrow. The summer was at its liberalest. Innumerable insects
of the nocturnal sort were singing in unison with the frogs in the
pools. A whip-poor-will called, and its neighbor answered like an echo.
The leaves of the trees, glossy from the late rain, moved musically to
the light west wind, and the exquisite perfume of many flowers came in
on the breeze.

When the failing woman sank into silence, Martha leaned her elbow on the
window-sill, and, gazing far into the great deeps of space, gave herself
up to unwonted musings upon the problems of human life. She sighed
deeply at times. She found herself at moments in the almost terrifying
position of a human soul in space. Not a wife, not a mother, but just a
soul facing the questions which harass philosophers. As she realized her
condition of mind she apprehended something of the thinking of the
woman on the bed. Matilda had gone beyond--or far back--of the wife and
mother.

The hours wore on; the dying woman stirred uneasily now and then,
whispering a word or phrase which related to her girlhood--never to her
later life. Once she said:

"Mother, hold me. I'm so tired."

Martha took the thin form in her arms, and, laying her head close beside
the sunken cheek, sang, in half breath, a lullaby till the sufferer grew
quiet again.

The lustrous moon passed over the house, leaving the room dark, and
still the patient watcher sat beside the bed, listening to the slow
breathing of the dying one. The cool air grew almost chill; the east
began to lighten, and with the coming light the tide of life sank in the
dying body. The head, hitherto restlessly turning, ceased to move. The
eyes grew quiet and began to soften like a sleeper's.

"How are you now, dear?" asked the watcher several times, bending over
the bed, and bathing back the straying hair.

"I'm tired--tired, mother--turn me," she murmured drowsily, with heavy
lids drooping.

Martha patted the pillows once again, and turned her friend's face to
the wall. The poor, tortured, restless brain slowly stopped its grinding
whirl, and