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Chapter LXII
When morning came, and they could speak more calmly on the
subject of their grief, they heard how her life had closed.
She had been dead two days. They were all about her at the time,
knowing that the end was drawing on. She died soon after daybreak.
They had read and talked to her in the earlier portion of the night, but
as the hours crept on, she sunk to sleep. They could tell, by what she
faintly uttered in her dreams, that they were of her journeyings with
the old man; they were of no painful scenes, but of people who had
helped and used them kindly, for she often said 'God bless you!' with
great fervour. Waking, she never wandered in her mind but once, and
that was of beautiful music which she said was in the air. God knows.
It may have been.
Opening her eyes at last, from a very quiet sleep, she begged that they
would kiss her once again. That done, she turned to the old man with
a lovely smile upon her face - such, they said, as they had never seen,
and never could forget - and clung with both her arms about his neck.
They did not know that she was dead, at first.
She had spoken very often of the two sisters, who, she said, were like
dear friends to her. She wished they could be told how much she
thought about them, and how she had watched them as they walked
together, by the river side at night. She would like to see poor Kit, she
had often said of late. She wished there was somebody to take her love
to Kit. And, even then, she never thought or spoke about him, but
with something of her old, clear, merry laugh.
For the rest, she had never murmured or complained; but with a quiet
mind, and manner quite unaltered - save that she every day became
more earnest and more grateful to them - faded like the light upon a
summer's evening.
The child who had been her little friend came there, almost as soon as
it was day, with an offering of dried flowers which he begged them to
lay upon her breast. It was he who had come to the window overnight
and spoken to the sexton, and they saw in the snow traces of small
feet, where he had been lingering near the room in which she lay,
before he went to bed. He had a fancy, it seemed, that they had left
her there alone; and could not bear the thought.
He told them of his dream again, and that it was of her being restored
to them, just as she used to be. He begged hard to see her, saying that
he would be very quiet, and that they need not fear his being alarmed,
for he had sat alone by his young brother all day long when he was
dead, and had felt glad to be so near him. They let him have his wish;
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