Roger was weary with watching; the chiming sounds of Summer, the low ticking of the old clock on the stairs, and the utter quiet within, soothed him to slumber; his head bent forward and rested on the bedside; he fell asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed.

Over Sunny’s pillow (for in this dream he seemed to himself waking and watching) he saw a hovering spirit, the incarnate shape of Light, gazing at the sleeping child with ineffable tenderness; but its keen eyes caught the aspect of Roger’s Shadow; the pure lineaments glowed with something more divinely awful than anger, and with levelled lance it assailed that evil Presence and bore it to the ground; but the Shadow slipped aside from the spear, and cowered into distance; the angelic face saddened, and, stooping downward, folded Sunny in its arms as if to bear her away.

Roger woke with his own vain attempt to grasp and detain the child.  The setting sun streamed in at the window, and his mother stood at his side, brought by some inarticulate sound from Sunny’s lips.

She sent the boy to call his father, and when they came in together, the child’s wide blue eyes were open, full of supernatural calm; her parched lips parted with a faint smile; and the loose golden curls pushed off her forehead, where the blue veins crept, like vivid stains of violet, under the clear skin.

“Dear mother!” she said, raising her arms slowly, to be lifted on the pillow; but the low, hoarse voice had lost its music.

Then she turned to her father with that strange bright smile, and again to Roger, uttering faintly,—­

“Stand away, Roger; Sunny wants the light.”

They drew all the curtain opposite her bed away, and, as she stretched her hands eagerly toward the window, the last rays of sunshine glowed on her pale illuminated face, till it was even as an angel’s, and Roger caught a sudden gleam of wings across the air; but a cold pain struck him as he gazed, for Sunny fell backward on her pillow.  She had gone with the sunshine.

It seemed now for a time as if the phantasm that haunted Roger Pierce were banished at last.  His moody reserve disappeared; he addressed himself with quiet, constant effort to console his mother,—­to aid his father,—­to fill, so far as he could, the vacant place; and his heart longed with an incessant thirst for the bright Spirit that hovered in his dream over Sunny;—­he seemed almost to have begun a natural and healthy life.

But year after year passed away, and the light of Sunny’s influence faded with her fading memory.  Green turf grew over her short grave, and the long slant shadow of its headstone no longer lay on a foot-worn track.  Roger’s pilgrimages to that spot were over; his heart had ceased to remember.  The Shadow had reassumed its power, and reigned.

Still through its obscurity he kept one gleam of light,—­an admiration undiminished for those who seemed to have no such attendance; but daily the number of these grew less.