As spring approached she seemed better, and the father's heart grew stronger, and Lucy's step was lighter, and grandma's words more cheerful, as hope whispered, "she will live." But when the snow was melted from off the hillside, and over the earth the warm spring sun was shining, when the buds began to swell and the trees to put forth their young leaves, there came over her a change so fearful that with one bitter cry of sorrow hope fled forever; and again, in the lonely night season, the weeping father knelt and asked for strength to bear it when his best-loved child was gone.
"Poor Harry!" said Lizzie one day to Anna, who was sitting by her, "Poor Harry, if I could see him again; but I never shall."
"Perhaps you will," answered Anna. "I wrote, to him three weeks ago, telling him to come quickly."
"Then he will," said Lizzie, "but if I should be dead when he comes, tell him how I loved him to the last, and that the thought of leaving him was the sharpest pang I suffered."
There were tears in Anna's eyes as she kissed the cheek of the sick girl, and promised to do her bidding. After a moment's pause Lizzie added, "I am afraid Harry is not a Christian, and you must promise not to leave him until he has a well-founded hope that again in heaven I shall see him."
Anna promised all, and then as Lizzie seemed exhausted she left her and returned home. One week from that day she stood once more in Lizzie's sick-room, listening for the last time to the tones of the dying girl as she bade her friends adieu. Convulsed with grief Lucy knelt by the bedside, pressing to her lips one little clammy hand, and accusing herself of destroying her sister's life. In the furthest corner of the room sat Mr. Dayton. He could not stand by and see stealing over his daughter's face the dark shadow which falls but once on all. He could not look upon her when over her soft brown eyes the white lids closed forever. Like a naked branch in the autumn wind his whole frame shook with agony, and though each fiber of grandma's heart was throbbing with anguish, yet for the sake of her son she strove to be calm, and soothed him as she would a little child. Berintha, too, was there, and while her tears were dropping fast, she supported Lizzie in her arms, pushing back from her pale brow the soft curls which, damp with the moisture of death, lay in thick rings upon her forehead.
"Has Harry come?" said Lizzie.
The answer was in the negative, and a moan of disappointment came from her lips.
Again she spoke: "Give him my Bible—and my curls—when I am dead let Lucy arrange them—she knows how; then cut them off, and the best, the longest, the brightest is for Harry; the others for you all. And tell—tell—tell him to meet—me in heaven—where I'm—going—going."
A stifled shriek from Lucy, as she fell back fainting, told that with the last word, "going," Lizzie had gone to heaven!