He knelt, and the others with him, between the buried negro and the unburied nurse, and thanked God for the knowledge and the recollection of the holy life which this man had lived among them in their hour of need.
They buried him, as they must, and hurried homeward to their living, comforting one another for his memory as they could.
As for him, he rested, after her hand had fallen on his eyes. He who had known so deeply the starvation of sleeplessness, slept well that night.
In the morning, when they all awoke, these of the sorrowing city here, and those of the happy city yonder; when they took up life again with its returning sunrise,—the sick and the well, the free and the fettered, the living and the dead,—the frost lay, cool, white, blessed, on his grave.
THE LIFE-MAGNET.
By Alvey A. Adee.
⁂ Putnam’s Magazine, August, 1870.