And this was the end of the lovely girl—­to leave the fair world still young, because a selfish man had seen that she was fair!  No time can change the relation of cause and effect.  The poison that operates ever so slowly is yet poison, and yet slays.  And that man was now murdering her, with weapon long-reaching from out of the past.  But no, thank God! this was not the end of her.  Though there is woe for that man by whom the offence cometh, yet there is provision for the offence.  There is One who bringeth light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow, humility out of wrong.  Back to the Father’s house we go with the sorrows and sins which, instead of inheriting the earth, we gathered and heaped upon our weary shoulders, and a different Elder Brother from that angry one who would not receive the poor swine-humbled prodigal, takes the burden from our shoulders, and leads us into the presence of the Good.

She put out her hand feebly, let it lie in mine, looked as if she wanted me to sit down by her bedside, and when I did so, closed her eyes.  She said nothing.  Her father was too much troubled to meet me without showing the signs of his distress, and his was a nature that ever sought concealment for its emotion; therefore he sat still.  But Gerard crept down from his knee, came to me, clambered up on mine, and laid his little hand upon his mother’s, which I was holding.  She opened her eyes, looked at the child, shut them again, and tears came out from between the closed lids.

“Has Gerard ever been baptized?” I asked her.

Her lips indicated a no.

“Then I will be his godfather.  And that will be a pledge to you that I will never lose sight of him.”

She pressed my hand, and the tears came faster.

Believing with all my heart that the dying should remember their dying Lord, and that the “Do this in remembrance of me” can never be better obeyed than when the partaker is about to pass, supported by the God of his faith, through the same darkness which lay before our Lord when He uttered the words and appointed the symbol, we kneeled, Thomas and I, and young Tom, who had by this time joined us with his sister Mary, around the bed, and partook with the dying woman of the signs of that death, wherein our Lord gave Himself entirely to us, to live by His death, and to the Father of us all in holiest sacrifice as the high-priest of us His people, leading us to the altar of a like self-abnegation.  Upon what that bread and that wine mean, the sacrifice of our Lord, the whole world of humanity hangs.  It is the redemption of men.

After she had received the holy sacrament, she lay still as before.  I heard her murmur once, “Lord, I do not deserve it.  But I do love Thee.”  And about two hours after, she quietly breathed her last.  We all kneeled, and I thanked the Father of us aloud that He had taken her to Himself.  Gerard had been fast asleep on his aunt’s lap, and she had put him to bed a little before.  Surely he slept a deeper sleep than his mother’s; for had she not awaked even as she fell asleep?