"Now the lid—have it off quickly," groans the wretched man; "and the lantern. Bring it near that I may look on my dead."
Eagerly he kneels on the ground and scans the beautiful white features of the dead. A groan burst from his lips:
"It is she, my wife, my lost Edith, still young and beautiful as when I wooed her to be my own! Ah, even time and death could not efface that surpassing loveliness!"
But the sexton answers, compassionately:
"Ah, sir, it is not your wife, but your daughter. Your wife had grown older and sadder. Her bonny locks were mixed with gray; I used to see her here on many a Sabbath when she came to weep by her parents' graves. This, sir, is your daughter, with her mother's face."
"My daughter, with her mother's face!" he cries, and stoops to press a long-lingering kiss on the white brow beneath the careless rings of sunny hair. He starts back with a loud cry: "My God!"
The sexton trembles with apprehension.
"My dear sir, let me beg you to be more prudent," he whispers. "What if we should be discovered?"
But Lawrence Campbell's face is transfigured with a trembling hope and joy.
"I believe that I am sane," he exclaims, "I do not believe that I am dreaming. Yet when I kissed Vera's brow it felt warm and moist like the flesh of the living. Tell me, am I right?"