The next day, at the same hour, when the balmy September air was everywhere, and the mid-afternoon sun was filling the house with golden light, and the crickets’ chirp was heard in the long grass, and the robins were singing in the tree-tops, another scene was presented in the sick room, where Frank Tracy knelt at his dying daughter’s side, with his face bowed on his hands, while her fingers played feebly with his white hair as she spoke to Arthur, who had just come in.  They had told him she was dying and had asked for him, and with his nervous horror of everything painful and exciting, he had shrunk from the ordeal; but Jerrie’s will prevailed, and he went with her to the room, where Frank, and his wife, and Tom were waiting—­Tom standing, with folded arms, at the foot of the bed, and looking, with hot, dry eyes, into the face on the pillow, where death was setting his seal; the mother, half-fainting upon the lounge, with the nurse beside her; and Frank, oblivious of everything except the fact that Maude was dying.

‘Kiss me good-bye, Uncle Arthur,’ she said, when he came in, ’and come this side where father is.’  Then, as he went round and stood by Frank, she reached her hand for his, and, putting it on her father’s head, said to him:  ’Forgive him, Uncle Arthur; he is so sorry, poor father—­the dearest, the best man in the world.  It was for me; say that you forgive him.’

Only Frank and one other knew just what she meant, although a sudden suspicion darted through Jerrie’s mind, and, when Arthur looked helplessly at her, she whispered to him: 

’Never mind what she means—­her mind may be wandering; but say that you forgive him, no matter what it is.’

Thus adjured, Arthur said to the grief-stricken man, who shook like an aspen: 

’I know of nothing to forgive except your old disbelief in Gretchen, and deceiving me about sending the carriage the night Jerrie came; but if there is anything else, no matter what it is, I do forgive you freely.’

‘Thanks,’ came faintly from Maude, who whispered: 

‘It is a vow, remember, made at my death-bed.’

She had done all she could, this little girl, whose life had been so short, and who, as she once said, had been capable of nothing but loving and being loved; and now, turning her dim eyes upon Jerrie, who was parting the damp hair upon her brow, she went on: 

’Remember the promise, and the flowers, and the golden seat where you will find me resting by the flowing river whose shores I am now looking upon, for I am almost there, almost to the golden seat, and the tree whose leaves are like emeralds, and where the grass and flowers are like the flowers and grass of summer just after a rain.  I am glad for you, Jerrie.  Good-bye; and you, father dear, good-bye.’

That was the last, for Maude was dead; and the servants, who had been standing about the door, stole noiselessly back to their work, with wet eyes and a sense of pain and loss in their hearts, for not one of them but had loved the gentle girl now gone forever from their midst.