Seven times have the spring violets blossomed, seven times the flowers of summer bloomed, seven times have the autumnal stores been gathered in, and seven times have the winds of winter sighed over the New England hills since Lizzie was laid to rest.  In her home there have been few changes.  Mr. Dayton’s hair is whiter than it was of old, and the furrows on his brow deeper and more marked.  Grandma, quiet and gentle as ever, knits on day after day, ever and anon speaking of “our dear little Lizzie, who died years ago.”

Lucy is still unmarried, and satisfied, too, that it should be so.  A patient, self-sacrificing Christian, she strives to make up to her father for the loss of one over whose memory she daily weeps, and to whose death she accuses herself of being accessory.  Dr. Benton and his rather fashionable wife live in their great house, ride in their handsome carriage, give large dinner parties, play chess after supper, and then the old doctor nods over his evening paper, while Berintha nods over a piece of embroidery, intended to represent a little dog chasing a butterfly and which would as readily be taken for that as for anything else, and for anything else as that.

Two years ago a pale young missionary departed to carry the news of salvation to the heathen land.  Some one suggested that he should take with him a wife, but he shook his head mournfully, saying, “I have one wife in heaven.”  The night before he left home, he might have been seen, long after midnight, seated upon a grassy grave, where the flowers of summer were growing.  Around the stone which marks the spot rose bushes have clustered so thickly as to hide from view the words there written, but push them aside and you will read, “Our darling Lizzie.”