"Adieu! father," he said; "I think I shall be gone when you come back.
Do you know that I am going on a journey? They will not tell me where,
but I shall not forget you all here. Ask the Saints to bring me safe
back."

Mr. Strafford knelt by the bed for a moment, and asked a heavenly guide
for the poor wanderer on this his last journey, but he seemed to hear
nothing and went on murmuring to himself,

"Ave Maria, gratia plena--"

When her friend was gone, and Mrs. Costello came back to her seat, he
was still feebly repeating "pro nobis peccatoribus, pro nobis
peccatoribus," with a faint trembling voice, as if even to the dulled
faculties, through the deepening shadow of death, some faint distorted
gleam of the truth had pierced, and the soul was, in truth, less torpid
than the brain.

His wife sat by his side, and listened, deeply touched. She perceived
that the part of his life with which she was associated, was dead to
him; she could only stand aside and watch while the shadows of an
earlier time gathered closely round him. But the more she understood
this, the more a painful tenderness filled her heart towards him; she
almost fancied that she had loved him all these years, and only found it
out now that he had forgotten her. She began to grow impatient for
Lucia's coming, and to long for the moment when she should be able to
say,

"My child, this is your father."

The broad clear light of sunshine upon snow had begun to soften towards
twilight when Lucia came.

Mrs. Bellairs brought her, but stayed below, that that meeting might
have no witnesses. A trembling hand upon the lock warned Mrs. Costello,
and she met her daughter at the door and brought her in.

Lucia had been struggling all day--ever since she knew that she was, at
last, to see her father--to forget the one moment when they had met
before; and all her efforts had been worse than useless. She came in,
agitated and distressed, with the vision of that night clear and vivid
before her recollection. So it was at the threshold. Her mother led her
to the bedside, and the vision fled. Her eyes fell upon a face, little
darker than her own, where not the slightest flush even of life-like
colour remained, where a perfect calm had given back their natural
nobleness to the worn features, and where scarcely a line was left to
show the trace of life's sins or sufferings. She stood for a moment half
bewildered. She knew that what she saw was but the faintest