f the darkness cometh a light,
Out of the silence cometh a voice,
The pathway of life grows suddenly bright,
And as never before we all rejoice.

The dearly beloved who have gone before
Come back to bless from the beautiful shore;
They speak to us words of lofty cheer,
That banish the clouds of darksome fear.

How sweet to _know_ that there is no death,
That the soul outlives the fleeting breath;
That guardian angels surround us ever
With a deathless love no power can sever.

We mourn no more the vanished youth,
We are nearing the heaven of eternal truth;
We lament no more the earthly ills,
For their power will cease on the heavenly hills.

We grieve no more for the wrinkled brow,
Nor for withering locks as white as snow,
For soon will we greet what is unseen now,
Soon to the sunlit heights will we go.

For many years doubt's saddening shade
On our hearts its pall has laid:
But a gleam comes from the bright forever,
And gloom and fear shall haunt us never.

We have felt the touch of the vanished hand,
We have heard the sound of the voice that is still;
They have come to us from the better land,
Their cheering words our spirits thrill.

"We will know the loved who have gone before,
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be
When over the river, the beautiful river,
The angel of death shall carry me."

CHAPTER XXVII.

AMONG THE LAW-SHARKS.

It seems to be an unwritten law of human life that every great joy
shall be quickly followed by a great sorrow. The materialized forms
of our spirit loved-ones had scarcely vanished from sight, when the
trouble of which my brother had forewarned us fell like a thunderbolt
from a cloudless sky.

We had, without a thought of deception, and at prices which then
prevailed, sold to many persons, lands in Florida, some for
settlement, some as investments. Phosphate had been discovered in
the immediate vicinity of some of our tracts, and this fact had led
speculators to buy our lands, hoping that these deposits might greatly
enhance values; but the usual competition to sell this valuable
fertilizer had for the time reduced prices to a non-paying basis;
then, too, an unprecedented freeze, which once in about a hundred
years visits all semi-tropical countries, had destroyed many orange
groves in the State, and so frightened short-sighted, timid people,
that Florida lands were