At the foot of the coffin stood the ungainly form of our lodger.  He seemed to be intently watching the face of the corpse, and was stooped a little, while with his hands he tapped sharply, from time to time at the sides of the coffin, like one who designs to awaken a slumberer.  Perched upon the body of the child, and nuzzling among the grave-clothes, with a strange kind of ecstasy, was the detested brute, the cat I have so often mentioned.

The group thus revealed, I looked upon but for one instant; in the next I shouted, in absolute terror—­

“In God’s name! what are you doing?”

Our lodger shuffled away abruptly, as if disconcerted; but the ill-favoured cat, whisking round, stood like a demon sentinel upon the corpse, growling and hissing, with arched back and glaring eyes.

The lodger, turning abruptly toward me, motioned me to one side.  Mechanically I obeyed his gesture, and he hurried hastily from the room.

Sick and dizzy, I returned to my own chamber.  I confess I had not nerve to combat the infernal brute, which still held possession of the room, and so I left it undisturbed.

This incident I did not tell to my wife until some time afterwards; and I mention it here because it was, and is, in my mind associated with a painful circumstance which very soon afterwards came to light.

That morning I witnessed the burial of my darling child.  Sore and desolate was my heart; but with infinite gratitude to the great controller of all events, I recognised in it a change which nothing but the spirit of all good can effect.  The love and fear of God had grown strong within me—­in humbleness I bowed to his awful will—­with a sincere trust I relied upon the goodness, the wisdom, and the mercy of him who had sent this great affliction.  But a further incident connected with this very calamity was to test this trust and patience to the uttermost.

It was still early when I returned, having completed the last sad office.  My wife, as I afterwards learned, still lay weeping upon her bed.  But somebody awaited my return in the hall, and opened the door, anticipating my knock.  This person was our lodger.

I was too much appalled by the sudden presentation of this abhorred spectre even to retreat, as my instinct would have directed, through the open door.

“I have been expecting your return,” he said, “with the design of saying something which it might have profited you to learn, but now I apprehend it is too late.  What a pity you are so violent and impatient; you would not have heard me, in all probability, this morning.  You cannot think how cross-grained and intemperate you have grown since you became a saint—­but that is your affair, not mine.  You have buried your little daughter this morning.  It requires a good deal of that new attribute of yours, faith, which judges all things by a rule of contraries, and can never see anything but kindness in the worst afflictions