She hath known our mortal pain and passion—­our more than mortal triumph—­she hath heard the “blessed art thou among women.”  My unavailing prayers goldenly syllabled by her whose name sounds from the manger through all the world, may find acceptance with Him who, though our sins be as scarlet, can wash them white as wool.

Our hearts grew together as one, and along the headlands and the valleys one shadow went before us, and one shadow followed us, till the grave gaped hungry and terrible, and I was alone.  Faltering in fear, but lingering in love, I knelt by the deathbed—­it was the middle night, and the first moans of the autumn came down from the hills, for the frost specks glinted on her golden robes, and the wind blew chill in her bosom.  Heaven was full of stars, and the half-moon scattered abroad her beauty like a silver rain.  Many have been the middle nights since then, for years lie between me and that fearfulest of all watches; but a shadow, a sound, or a thought, turns the key of the dim chamber, and the scene is reproduced.

I see the long locks on the pillow, the smile on the ashen lips, the thin, cold fingers faintly pressing my own, and hear the broken voice saying, “I am going now.  I am not afraid.  Why weep ye?  Though I were to live the full time allotted to man, I should not be more ready, nor more willing than now.”  But over this there comes a shudder and a groan that all the mirthfulness of the careless was impotent to drown.

Three days previous to the death-night, three days previous to the transit of the soul from the clayey tabernacle to the house not; made with hands—­from dishonour to glory—­let me turn theme over as so many leaves.

The first of the November mornings, but the summer had tarried late, and the wood to the south of our homestead lifted itself like a painted wall against the sky—­the squirrel was leaping nimbly and chattering gayly among the fiery tops of the oaks or the dun foliage of the hickory, that shot up its shelving trunk and spread its forked branches far over the smooth, moss-spotted boles of the beeches, and the limber boughs of the elms.  Lithe and blithe he was, for his harvest was come.

From the cracked beech-burs was dropping the sweet, angular fruit, and down from the hickory boughs with every gust fell a shower of nuts—­shelling clean and silvery from their thick black hulls.

Now and then, across the stubble-field, with long cars erect, leaped the gray hare, but for the most part he kept close in his burrow, for rude huntsmen were on the hills with their dogs, and only when the sharp report of a rifle rung through the forest, or the hungry yelping of some trailing hound startled his harmless slumber, might you see at the mouth of his burrow the quivering lip and great timid eyes.

Along the margin of the creek, shrunken now away from the blue and gray and yellowish stones that made its cool pavement, and projected in thick layers from the shelving banks, the white columns of gigantic sycamores leaped earthward, their bases driven, as it seemed, deep into the ground—­all their convolutions of roots buried out, of view.  Dropping into the stagnant waters below, came one by one the broad, rose-tinted leaves, breaking the shadows of the silver limbs.