Then, taking a pencil and a tiny sheet of note paper from the box, she wrote:
"Heaven forgive you, William. Pray for pardon at my grave. You have much need to pray."
Passing it to Jessie, she said:
"Give this to William when I am dead; and now draw the covering closer over me, for I am growing cold and sleepy."
Jessie folded the blanket about her shoulders and chest, and then sat down beside her, while the family, hearing no sound, stole softly across the threshold into the room where the May moonshine lay; where the candle burned dimly on the table, and where the light of a young life flickered and faded with each tick of the tall old clock, which in the kitchen without could be distinctly heard measuring off the time.
Fainter and fainter, dimmer and dimmer, grew the light, until at last, as the swinging pendulum beat the hour of midnight, it went out forever, and the moon-beams fell on the golden hair and white face of the beautiful dead.
[CHAPTER XI.—THE NIGHT AFTER THE BURIAL.]
Down the lane, over the rustic bridge beneath the shadow of the tasseled pines and up the grassy hillside, where the headstones of the dead gleamed in the warm sunlight, the long procession wended its way, and the fair May blossoms were upturned, and the moist earth thrown out to make room for the fair sleeper, thus early gone to rest.
Then back again, down the grassy hillside, under the tasseled pines, and up the winding lane the mourners came, and all the afternoon the villagers talked of the beautiful girl,—but in the home she had left so desolate, her name was not once mentioned. They could not speak of her yet, and so the mother sat in her lonely room, rocking to and fro, just as she used to do when there was pillowed on her breast the golden head, now lying across the fields, where the dim eyes of the deacon wandered often, as the old man whispered to himself.
"One grave more, and one chair less. Our store grows fast in Heaven."