'Have comfort, madam, he shall be my son. Kate will be a mother to him!'
'Bless you! bless her! A mother's blessing—will be on you both! The blessing of God—will be on you—and if the dead can come back—to comfort those they love—I will come back—and comfort you!'
I do not know—I can not know till the veil which hides her world from ours, is lifted from my eyes, but there have been times—many times—since she said that, when Kate and I have thought she was KEEPING HER WORD!
For a half-hour she lay without speaking, still holding our hands in hers. Then, in a low tone—so low that I had to bend down to hear—she said:
'Oh! is it not beautiful! Don't you hear? And look! oh! look! And my mother, too! Oh! it is too bright for such as I!'
The heavenly gates had opened to her! She had caught a vision of the better land!
In a moment she said:
'Farewell my friend—my child—I will come——' Then a low sound rattled in her throat, and she passed away, just as the last rays of the winter sun streamed through the low window. One of its bright beams rested on her face, and lingered there till we laid her away forever.
And now, as I sit with Kate on this grassy mound, this mild summer afternoon, and write these lines, we talk together of her short, sad life, of her calm, peaceful death, and floating down through the long years, comes to us the blessing of her pure, redeemed spirit, pleasant as the breath of the flowers that are growing on her grave. We look up, and, through our thick falling tears, read again the words which we placed over her in the long ago: