nt you a truer and more
enduring union with hearts that pulsate truly to your own, in that land
where the sad wail of "Too Late!" is never heard and where no binding
link fetters the limbs or galls the spirit!

"I understand you now," said Richard Crawford. "And yet yours is a
strange fancy and would be a dangerous one in many minds. But you are a
brave girl, I believe, and that makes all the difference. Besides, you
have health and strength, and most of the time high spirits. An
invalid--a miserable cripple like myself, housed and shut away, can
scarcely hope to understand or appreciate anything that comes freshly in
out of God's sunshine!" The old sad and repining spirit had once more
come over Richard Crawford, perhaps invoked by something in the young
girl's words; and she saw the shadow almost as soon as he felt it. From
that moment she was the rattle-pate again, and he caught no more
glimpses into the sanctuary of her inner heart. He was to catch no more,
forever; for the next time they spoke together in private was after
certain events already related had occurred--after her hand had lain in
another, in so significant a pressure that no time or change could ever
take away the tingle of the blood which it communicated--after her eyes
began to open on a new phase of destiny--and after "Ever of Thee" ceased
to be a sad abstraction.

Just now she rattled on, as she assisted the invalid back to his room,
endeavoring to rouse his once-more sinking spirits, with all her old
gayety and abandon.

"You call me brave, do you?" she said. "Dick Crawford, if I was not a
little ashamed of you for allowing yourself to have these fits of low
spirits, I would tell you something to prove how 'brave' I am! Well, I
_will_ tell you, because I know that it is exceedingly improper and I
ought not to do so. Two or three weeks ago, spending an evening at Mrs.
R----'s, her daughters showed me a suit of clothes belonging to a
stripling brother, just gone away to the war. One of them bantered me to
put on the suit and go down-stairs among the gentlemen. I thought it
would be a good joke, and I tried it. The girls said that I made a very
handsome boy--hem! and I suppose that I did. At all events, I went
down-stairs and opened the parlor-door, bold as a sheep, when--what do
you think happened? Why, I thought, all at once, that all the clothes
were sticking tight to my limbs; and when one of the gentlemen came
towards me, I grabbed the cloth