Huldah sat as still as a mouse, never speaking, and hoping to escape being spoken to.  Occasionally she placed a piece of coal or wood on the fire, but that was all.  She could not see her aunt’s face, but she thought at last she must be asleep, she was so still and quiet.

The silence, broken as it was only by the crackle of the fire, had begun to grow oppressive, when suddenly it was broken by a sound of singing, low, quivering, almost indistinct:—­

    “For the end—­of my—­journey—­I see—­
     Many dear to my heart—­over there
     Are watching—­and waiting for me. 
       Over—­there, over—­there—­
     I’ll soon be—­at—­home—­”

Tom Smith tried to draw away his hand, but his wife’s hand clung to it, her voice died away.  “Kiss me—­Tom, won’t you?” she gasped.

He stooped and kissed her.  She lifted her hand to touch his cheek, but it fell back helpless.  “Hark,” she gasped—­“the knocking!  I—­am coming—­” then with one long deep sigh, her voice was still for ever.

A few moments later, Tom Smith stumbled down the stairs, and out into the darkness and away, never to be seen by Huldah again.  She knew and realised nothing then, but that her Aunt Emma was dead, that all her dreams had ended, all her plans for the future were fruitless, that their living together was ended, her home broken up once more.

“She’s had such a hard life!” she sobbed.  “And I thought I was going to make her so happy when she got about a bit again.”

“But she never would have got about again, dear.  She could never have got beyond these rooms, and I feel sure she would always have worried about her husband.  She could never have gone about with him again, and she would have fretted at being left behind.  She is happy now, brownie, and out of pain.  No one who really loved her could wish her back again.  Don’t grieve so, Huldah dear.  You made the last months of her life happier than any she had known.”

“But I ran away and left her, and he beat her and Charlie for it, and—­and—­”

“Brownie, dear, if you want to do what would have pleased your aunt, you will forget all that.  She loved him and forgave him everything, and she longed for others too to forget that he was ever anything but a kind husband.”

Huldah was silent.  She understood the feeling.  It was what she wanted everyone to feel with regard to Aunt Emma,—­to remember only what was good of her.

And she had her wish.  The little group gathered in the churchyard a few days later remembered only her suffering and her sorrows, and the love which had lived through all, and many a pretty bunch of winter flowers and leaves and berries were laid on her grave by kindly, pitying hands.  In the furthest corner of the little churchyard they laid her, in a corner where the sun rested, and where a hawthorn grew, in which a robin sang hopefully while they laid her to rest.