A few of the villagers were invited, and when all was ready Mr. Dayton brought down in his arms his white-faced Lizzie, who imperceptibly had grown paler and weaker every day, while those who looked at her as she reclined upon the sofa, sighed, and thought of a different occasion when they probably would assemble there.  For once Lucy was very amiable, and with the utmost politeness and good nature waited upon the guests.  There was a softened light in her eye, and a heightened bloom on her cheek, occasioned by a story which Berintha, two hours before, had told her, of a heart all crushed in its youth, and aching on through long years of loneliness, but which was about to be made happy by a union with the only object it had ever loved!  Do you start and wonder?  Have you not guessed that Dr. Benton, who that night for the second time breathed the marriage vow, was the same who, years before, won the girlish love of Berintha Dayton, and then turned from her to the more beautiful Amy Holbrook, finding, too late, that all is not gold that glitters?  It is even so, and could you have seen how tightly he clasped the hand of his new wife, and how fondly his eye rested upon her, you would have said that, however long his affections might have wandered, they had at last returned to her, his first, best love.

CHAPTER XI.

LIZZIE.

    Gathered ’round a narrow coffin,
      Stand a mourning, funeral train,
    While for her, redeemed thus early,
      Tears are falling now like rain.

    Hopes are crushed and hearts are bleeding;
      Drear the fireside now, and alone;
    She, the best loved and the dearest,
      Far away to heaven hath flown.

    Long, long, will they miss thee, Lizzie,
      Long, long days for thee they’ll weep;
    And through many nights of sorrow
      Memory will her vigils keep.

In the chapter just finished we casually mentioned that Lizzie, instead of growing stronger, had drooped day by day, until to all save the fond hearts which watched her, she seemed surely passing away.  But they to whom her presence was as sunlight to the flowers, shut their eyes to the dreadful truth, refusing to believe that she was leaving them.  Oftentimes during the long winter nights would Mr. Dayton steal softly to her chamber, and kneeling by her bedside gaze in mute anguish upon the wasted face of his darling.  And when from her transparent brow and marble cheek he wiped the deadly night sweats, a chill, colder far than the chill of death, crept over his heart, and burying his face in his hands he would cry, “Oh, Father, let this cup pass from me!”

As spring approached she seemed better, and the father’s heart grew stronger, and Lucy’s step was lighter, and grandma’s words more cheerful, as hope whispered, “she will live.”  But when the snow was melted from off the hillside, and over the earth the warm spring sun was shining, when the buds began to swell and the trees to put forth their young leaves, there came over her a change so fearful that with one bitter cry of sorrow hope fled forever; and again, in the lonely night season, the weeping father knelt and asked for strength to bear it when his best-loved child was gone.