's voice gradually calmed her. At last, she turned and
clung round his neck, silently and long. Then she rose up and went
about her usual duties, just as if this horrible dread were not upon us.

Mary Baines and her children stayed in the house. Next day, about
noon, the little lad died.

It was the first death that had ever happened under our roof. It
shocked us all very much, especially the children. We kept them far
away on the other side of the house--out of the house, when
possible--but still they would be coming back and looking up at the
window, at which, as Muriel declared, the little sick boy "had turned
into an angel and flown away." The mother allowed the fancy to remain;
she thought it wrong and horrible that a child's first idea should be
"putting into the pit-hole." Truer and more beautiful was Muriel's
instinctive notion of "turning into an angel and flying away." So we
arranged that the poor little body should be coffined and removed
before the children rose next morning.

It was a very quiet tea-time. A sense of awe was upon the little ones,
they knew not why. Many questions they asked about poor Tommy Baines,
and where he had gone to, which the mother only answered after the
simple manner of Scripture--he "was not, for God took him." But when
they saw Mary Baines go crying down the field-path, Muriel asked "why
she cried? how could she cry, when it was God who had taken little
Tommy?"

Afterwards she tried to learn of me privately, what sort of place it
was he had gone to, and how he went; whether he had carried with him
all his clothes, and especially the great bunch of woodbine she sent to
him yesterday; and above all, whether he had gone by himself, or if
some of the "angels," which held so large a place in Muriel's thoughts,
and of which she was ever talking, had come to fetch him and take care
of him. She hoped--indeed, she felt sure--they had. She wished she had
met them, or heard them about in the house.

And seeing how the child's mind was running on the subject, I thought
it best to explain to her as simply as I could, the solemn putting off
of life and putting on of immortality. I wished that my darling, who
could never visibly behold death, should understand it as no image of
terror, but only as a calm sleep and a joyful waking in another
country, the glories of which eye had not seen nor ear heard.

"Eye has not seen!" repeated Muriel, thoughtfully; "can people SEE
there,