‘Not as you ought not,’ he fondly answered.  ’You always were his better angel, and you came at last as a messenger of peace.  There was relief and hope from the moment that he knew you.’

He told her what could scarcely have passed his lips save in those earlier hours of affliction.  It had been a time of grievous mental distress.  Neither natural temperament nor previous life had been such as to arm poor Gilbert to meet the King of Terrors; and as day by day he felt the cold grasp tightening on him, he had fluttered like a bird in the snare of the fowler, physically affrighted at the death-pang, shrinking from the lonely entrance into the unknown future, and despairing of the acceptableness of his own repentance.  He believed that he had too often relapsed, and he could not take heart to grasp the hope of mercy and rest in the great atonement.  The last Communion had been melancholy, the contrite spirit unable to lift itself up, and apparently only sunk the lower by the weight of love and gratitude, deepening the sense of how much had been disregarded.  There had since been a few hopeful gleams, but dimmed by bodily suffering and terror; and doubly mournful had been the weary hours of the night and morning, while he lay gasping away his life upon his father’s breast.  Having at first taken the absence of his stepmother as a sign that she had not forgiven him, he had only laid aside this notion for a more morbid fancy that the deprivation was a token of wrath from above; and there could be little doubt that her final appearance was hailed as a seal of pardon not merely from her.  Her brother, who had raised him up after his last fall, was likewise the person above all others to bring the message of mercy to speed him to the Unseen, where, as his look and gesture had persuaded his father, his brother, or some yet more blessed one, had received and welcomed the frail and trembling spirit.

That last farewell, that dawn of peace, so long prayed for, so ardently desired, had given Mr. Kendal such thankfulness and relief as sustained him, and enabled him to support his wife, who knew not how to meet her first home grief; whereas to him sorrow had long been a household guest more familiar than joy; and he was more at rest about his son than he had been for many a year.  He could dwell on him together with Edmund, instead of connecting him with shame, grief, and pain; though how little could he have borne to think that thus it would end, when in the springtime of his manhood he had rejoiced over his beautiful twin boys.

He knew his son better than heretofore.  After the first day’s disappointment, Gilbert had found him all-sufficient, and had rested on his tenderness.  All sternness had ceased on one side, all concealment on the other, and the sweetness of both characters had had full scope.  Gilbert’s ardent love of home had shown itself in every word, and his last exertion, had been to write a long letter to his little