Uncle Phineas?"

"Yes, my child. There is no darkness at all."

She paused a minute, and said earnestly, "I want to go--I very much
want to go. How long do you think it will be before the angels come
for me?"

"Many, many years, my precious one," said I, shuddering; for truly she
looked so like them, that I began to fear they were close at hand.

But a few minutes afterwards she was playing with her brothers and
talking to her pet doves, so sweet and humanlike, that the fear passed
away.

We sent the children early to bed that night, and sat long by the fire,
consulting how best to remove infection, and almost satisfied that in
these two days it could not have taken any great hold on the house.
John was firm in his belief in Dr. Jenner and vaccination. We went to
bed greatly comforted, and the household sank into quiet slumbers, even
though under its roof slept, in deeper sleep, the little dead child.

That small closet, which was next to the nursery I occupied, safely
shut out by it from the rest of the house, seemed very still now. I
went to sleep thinking of it, and dreamed of it afterwards.

In the middle of the night a slight noise woke me, and I almost fancied
I was dreaming still; for there I saw a little white figure gliding
past my bed's foot; so softly and soundlessly--it might have been the
ghost of a child--and it went into the dead child's room.

For a moment, that superstitious instinct which I believe we all have,
paralyzed me. Then I tried to listen. There was most certainly a
sound in the next room--a faint cry, quickly smothered--a very human
cry. All the stories I had ever heard of supposed death and premature
burial rushed horribly into my mind. Conquering alike my superstitious
dread or fear of entering the infected room, I leaped out of bed, threw
on some clothes, got a light, and went in.

There laid the little corpse, all safe and still--for ever. And like
its own spirit watching in the night at the head of the forsaken clay,
sat Muriel.

I snatched her up and ran with her out of the room, in an agony of fear.

She hid her face on my shoulder, trembling, "I have not done wrong,
have I? I wanted to know what it was like--that which you said was
left of little Tommy. I touched it--it was so cold. Oh! Uncle
Phineas! THAT isn't poor little Tommy?"

"No, my blessed one--no, my dearest child! Don't think of it any more."

And, hardly knowing what was best to be done, I calle