strove to copy even through the sufferings due to the corruptible.  His voice often shook and faltered.  He had never before read that Service; and perhaps, except for those of his own kin, it could never be a greater effort to him, going along with Alfred as he had done, holding up the rod and staff that bore him through the dark valley.  And each trembling of his tone seemed to answer something that the mother was feeling in her peaceful, hopeful, thankful grief—­yes, thankful that she could lay her once high-spirited and thoughtless boy in his grave, with the same sure and certain hope of a joyful Resurrection, as that ripe and earnest-minded Christian his father, or his little innocent brother.  It was peace—­awful peace, indeed, but soothing even to Ellen and Harold, new as they were to grief.

But to poor Paul at home, out of hearing of the words of hope, only listening to the melancholy toll of the knell, and quite alone in the disarranged forlorn house, there seemed nothing to take off the edge of misery.  He was not wanted to keep Alfred company now, nor to read to him—­no one needed him, no one cared for him.  He wandered up to where Alfred had lain so long, as if to look for the pale quiet face that used to smile to him.  There was nothing but the bed-frame and mattress!  He threw himself down on it and cried.  He did not well know why—­perhaps the chief feeling was that Alfred was gone away to rest and bliss, and he was left alone to be weary and without a friend.

At last the crying began to spend itself, and he turned and looked up.  There was Alfred’s little picture of the Crucified still on the wall, and the words under it, ‘For us!’ Paul’s eye fell on it; and somehow it brought to mind what Alfred had said to him on Christmas Day.  There was One Who had no home on earth; there was One Who had made Himself an outcast and a wanderer, and Who had not where to lay His Head.  Was not He touched with a fellow-feeling for the lonely boy?  Would He not help him to bear his friendless lot as a share of His own Cross?  Nay, had He not raised him up friends already in his utmost need?  ‘There is a Friend Who sticketh closer than a brother.’  He was the Friend that Paul need never lose, and in Whom he could still meet his dear Alfred.  These thoughts, not quite formed, but something like them, came gently as balm to the poor boy, and though they brought tears even thicker than the first burst of lonely sorrow, they were as peaceful as those shed beside the grave.  Though Paul was absent in the body, this was a very different shutting out from Harold’s on last Tuesday.

Paul must have cried himself to sleep, for he did not hear the funeral-party return, and was first roused by Mrs. King coming up-stairs.  He had been so much used to think of this as Alfred’s room, that he had never recollected that it was hers; and now that she was come up for a moment’s breathing-time, he started up ashamed and shocked at being so caught.