She was dead, and past all help, or need of help.  The ancient rooms she had seemed to fill with life, even while her own was waning fast, the garden she had tended, the eyes she had gladdened, the noiseless haunts of many a thoughtful hour, the paths she had trodden, as it were, but yesterday, could know her no more.

“It is not,” said the schoolmaster, as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek, and gave his tears free vent, “it is not in this world that heaven’s justice ends.  Think what earth is, compared with the world to which her young spirit has winged its early flight, and say, if one deliberate wish, expressed in solemn tones above this bed, could call her back to life, which of us would utter it?”

She had been dead two days.  They were all about her at the time, knowing that the end was drawing on.  She died soon after daybreak.  They had read and talked to her in the earlier portion of the night; but, as the hours crept on, she sank to sleep.  They could tell by what she faintly uttered in her dreams, that they were of her journeyings with the old man; they were of no painful scenes, but of people who had helped them, and used them kindly; for she often said “God bless you!” with great fervor.

Waking, she never wandered in her mind but once, and that was at beautiful music, which, she said, was in the air.  God knows.  It may have been.  Opening her eyes, at last, from a very quiet sleep, she begged that they would kiss her once again.  That done, she turned to the old man, with a lovely smile upon her face, such, they said, as they had never seen, and could never forget, and clung, with both her arms, about his neck.  She had never murmured or complained; but, with a quiet mind, and manner quite unaltered, save that she every day became more earnest and more grateful to them, faded like the light upon the summer’s evening.

The child who had been her little friend, came there, almost as soon as it was day, with an offering of dried flowers, which he begged them to lay upon her breast.  He told them of his dream again, and that it was of her being restored to them, just as she used to be.  He begged hard to see her:  saying, that he would be very quiet, and that they need not fear his being alarmed, for he had sat alone by his young brother all day long, when he was dead, and had felt glad to be so near him.  They let him have his wish; and, indeed, he kept his word, and was, in his childish way, a lesson to them all.

Up to that time, the old man had not spoken once, except to her, or stirred from the bedside.  But, when he saw her little favorite, he was moved as they had not seen him yet, and made as though he would have him come nearer.  Then, pointing to the bed, he burst into tears for the first time, and they who stood by, knowing that the sight of this child had done him good, left them alone together.

Soothing him with his artless talk of her, the child persuaded him to take some rest, to walk abroad, to do almost as he desired him.  And, when the day came, on which they must remove her, in her earthly shape, from earthly eyes forever, he led him away, that he might not know when she was taken from him.  They were to gather fresh leaves and berries for her bed.