“Mother,” Mr. Kensett had said, “I’m going to stop work now and lay by.  I’m getting old and we’ve got enough to do us I guess as long as we stay.  You can tend your flower-beds and darn my stockings, and I’ll make the garden and take care of the chickens, we’ll just take comfort a spell; if any body has earned the right to we have.”

As often as once a week he remarked, “There’s one thing I must see to, right away; I must make my will, so that if I go first you’ll be sure to have the old place all to yourself.  I want you to have every cent of it to do as you please with.”

And “Mother” always answered, “Now, father, don’t!  It won’t make much difference how it’s fixed; it isn’t anyways likely that I’ll stay long behind you, we’ve been together so long.”

There came a morning when the hale, cheery old man did not rise with the sun and step briskly about his work.  The messenger came for him in the night; and when the first streak of light in the early dawn stole through his chamber window, and fell upon his face to waken him, he did not awake, he had gone—­in the darkness alone with the messenger.  Strange journey!  Mysterious messenger!  His grey coat hung over the chair where he laid it off, the garden tools stood against the fence, the house had a strange silence, the sunshine a cold glare.  He who passed in and out yesterday, and worked and smiled and talked and read the news, to-day lay in the darkened parlour white, cold, and still.  No, not that!  To-day walked the golden streets—­joined in the everlasting song, and looked upon the face of his Lord.  The old Bible lay open on the stand, the psalm-book beside it, his glasses shut into the place where he sung at family worship a few hours before, and the psalm he sung—­his favourite—­was in the words of the quaint old version: 

“I will both lay me down in peace,
And quiet sleep will take;
Because then only me to dwell
In safety, Lord, dost make.”

Had he known how quiet the sleep was to be, the calm triumphant faith of the singer would not have wavered, nor would the peace with which he laid down have been less.

The will had never been made, so the old homestead must be sold and divided among them all.  They met at an early day to arrange affairs.  Mr. John Kensett, the eldest son, and Mrs. Maria Sinclair, the eldest daughter, were the self-appointed managers.  They were both wealthy, but were just as eager to secure the small sum that would fall to them as was Hannah, another daughter, who married a poor man and had many mouths to feed.  Whatever of sentiment or tender feeling these two might originally have possessed had been well rubbed out by the world.  In their catechism, the answer to “What is the chief end of man?” read:  To make money, to be fashionable, to please ourselves, now and here, always and everywhere.

In Benjamin, the youngest of the family, were condensed all the noble qualities and tender, poetical nature of both father and mother, while the other children brought out the unlovely characters of some distant ancestors.