Mother, don’t you love your darling child?
Oh, rock me in the cradle all the day.
She sat still and heard till the last cadence of the music had wandered out into the moonlight, where the angels, who wished to learn it off by heart, caught it up, and bore it in triumph into Heaven.
“I must go from here,” said the girl hoarsely. “Let me go, don’t follow me—I will be better soon.”
Her comrade reasoned with her, but she kept saying hoarsely. “Let me go—I will be better soon.”
She hurried out and fled like a frightened deer. She was mad! Her eyes were hot and dry—her brain was bursting, and all the while a wondrous choir was singing in her ears:
Bright sparkles in the church-yard,
Give light unto the tomb;
Bright summer—spring’s ever—
Sweet flowers in their bloom.
She fled like a hunted thing till the lights of the city were far behind and she was alone on a country road. She stopped to rest a moment, but the chorus went onward through the sky and she could not stop, for the words were beckoning to her:
“Your mother, once,
Your mother, twice,
In the heaven she’ll rejoice.”
Tireless she followed on, on, on, the long, long night. The moon went down and she got blind and staggered and groped upon her way, but still she said hoarsely, “I must go on. I’ll be better soon.”
In the morning a farmer threw open his door and saw lying on the steps the soiled figure of a girl. He picked her up and laid her on his own bed, and his wife laid the wild, pleading face against her warm bosom. A stream of music reached the ears of the dying girl.