"Ah, she has returned to Gützberg; she left here the very evening of the accident. She feared, I think, to meet the face of any one who knew and loved our darling."
"Ah, she did well," he said bitterly. "God, who forgives all sin, may pardon her. He can be merciful as well as just. But we of Edelsheim, never!"
The next morning the carriage, made with such care by poor faithful John, was lifted out from its corner in the room and carried down into the street; and there they laid upon it the little white coffin which held the body of Violet.
The descent to the little church-yard near the fountain was densely packed with mourners, and with difficulty the old policeman, assisted by Fritz, drew it through the weeping crowd. Behind it walked a company of children dressed in the same white robes with the same white wings which they had worn on the day of the procession; and now, as the little carriage moved on, their lips opened, and there burst forth the same song of the angels welcoming the weary soul to heaven which had startled Violet from her reverie only a few short days before and had called her from her loneliness and her fear to everlasting life.
Thus her wish was fulfilled, that her first drive in the carriage made for her by her father should be to the place where her mother had been buried; and there they laid down the poor tired lamb at last, to sleep on its mother's breast. The people, gathered round the grave, sobbed and wept; the angels lifted up their voices with the same sweet but mournful cry; the policeman folded his arms on his breast, grim and stern, while his sword clinked against the gravel. But it was left for Fritz to know the whole grand truth. Standing there unconscious of all and everything around him, with eyes uplifted to heaven he saw her as she was.
White-winged, rejoicing, exulting in her new-found strength, poised in the air above his head, radiant in robes of dazzling whiteness, he saw again that small white face break into a smile of rapture; and he heard a voice say, "Fritz, 'no more tears;' Violet has wings." And then some one cried out, "Look at the boy! he is white as death, he is fainting;" and so they lifted him into the church and laid him on the ground, and Aunt Lizzie placed his head upon her knee.
And by-and-by the crowd dispersed, and those who lingered laid wreaths upon the grave; and some knelt down and kissed the earth above their little Violet's sleeping-place.
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