Edna fell on her knees and grasped the icy hands.  “Grandpa! wake up!  Oh, grandpa! speak to me, your little Pearl!  Wake up! dear Grandy!  I have come back!  My grandpa!  Oh!—­”

A wild, despairing cry rent the still evening air, and shrieked dismally back from the distant hills and the gray, ghostly mountain--and the child fell on her face at the dead man’s feet.

Throughout that dreary night of agony, Edna lay on the bed where her grandfather’s body had been placed, holding one of the stiffened hands folded in both hers, and pressed against her lips.  She neither wept nor moaned, the shock was too terrible to admit of noisy grief; but completely stunned, she lay mute and desolate.

For the first time in her life she could not pray; she wanted to turn away from the thought of God and heaven, for it seemed that she had nothing left to pray for.  That silver-haired, wrinkled old man was the only father she had ever known; he had cradled her in his sinewy arms, and slept clasping her to his heart; had taught her to walk, and surrounded her with his warm, pitying love, making a home of peace and blessedness for her young life.  Giving him, in return, the whole wealth of her affection, he had become the centre of all her hopes, joys and aspirations; now what remained?  Bitter, rebellious feelings hardened her heart when she remembered that even while she was kneeling, thanking God for his preservation from illness, he had already passed away; nay, his sanctified spirit probably poised its wings close to the Eternal Throne, and listened to the prayer which she sent up to God for his welfare and happiness and protection while on earth.  The souls of our dead need not the aid of Sandalphon to interpret the whispers that rise tremulously from the world of sin and wrestling, that float up among the stars, through the gates of pearl, down the golden streets of the New Jerusalem.  So we all trust, and prate of our faith, and deceive ourselves with the fond hope that we are resigned to the Heavenly Will; and we go on with a show of Christian reliance, while the morning sun smiles in gladness and plenty, and the hymn of happy days and the dear voices of our loved ones make music in our ears; and lo!  God puts us in the crucible.  The light of life—­the hope of all future years is blotted out; clouds of despair and the grim night of an unbroken and unlifting desolation fall like a pall on heart and brain; we dare not look heavenward, dreading another blow; our anchor drags, we drift out into a hideous Dead Sea, where our idol has gone down forever—­and boasted faith and trust and patience are swept like straws from our grasp in the tempest of woe; while our human love cries wolfishly for its lost darling.  Ah! we build grand and gloomy mausoleums for our precious dead hopes, but, like Artemisia, we refuse to sepulchre—­we devour the bitter ashes of the lost, and grimly and audaciously challenge Jehovah to take the worthless,