'Oh, noble! noble!' sobbed poor Dan.
The doctor took him by the arm, and so into the solemn room.
'I think you'd like to see her, Dan?'
'I would—I would indeed, Sir.'
And there was little Lily, never so like the lily before. Poor old Sally had laid early spring flowers on the white coverlet. A snow-drop lay by her pale little finger and thumb, just like a flower that has fallen from a child's hand it its sleep. He looked, at her—the white angelic apparition—a smile, or a light upon the face.
'Oh, my darling, my young darling, gone—"He is not a man as I am, that I should answer him."'
But poor Dan, loudly crying, repeated the noble words of Paul, that have spoken down to us through the sorrows of nigh two thousand years—
'For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first.'
And so there was a little pause, and the old man said—
'It was very good of you to come to me, my good young friend, in my helplessness and shipwreck, for the Lord hath hid himself from me; but he speaks to his desolate creature, my good Dan, through your gracious lips. My faith!—I thought I had faith till it was brought to the test, and then it failed! But my good friend, Loftus, was sent to help me—to strengthen the feeble knees.'