“Yes, and go to heaven,” he ejaculated in a desperate, broken voice. “where the Lord Jesus our Savour is. You will be very happy there. He will give you a white robe and a golden harp, and you will have other little children to play with you; and there will be beautiful fields and flowers—”
“How werry nice,” half sighed, half breathed the exhausted child. A sweet, almost seraphic smile, flitted over her little face. Then a doubt assailed her. With a last, supreme effort, she tried to raise herself and look in his face. “Are you comin’ too, Woland?”
A look of blank despair met her loving glance. Surprised and bewildered, she shook off for an instant her coming lethargy. “Woland,” she said sharply, “I sha’n’t go to heaven widout you.” Then she sank back on the pillow—her eyes closed.
The frightful tension in which the lad held himself gave way. Her little fingers slipped from his grasp, and he fell back, in a dead faint. It did not disturb the little one however, and in a little time he was himself again, and anxiously watching the coming of the end.
CHAPTER IV
Life’s Benediction
IF we poor, short-sighted mortals had the planning of our lives, how strangely would they be laid out! I had imagined that the child was going to die, in order that her influence over the life that had become so strangely mixed up with hers might live. It had not occurred to me that the lad, thrown into a state of desperation and feeling himself branded as her murderer, might be tempted to some rash act. Thank heaven, he was not put to it. The child did not die, but lived to be a further blessing to him.