It was a wild, stormy day, with fierce
showers of sleet, and we clung to the hope that consideration for my
sister had prompted the message. In the afternoon Clarence battled
with a severe gale, made his way to Hillside, and heard that the
weather affected the patient, and that there was much bodily
distress. For one moment he saw her father, who said in broken
accents that we could only pray that the spirit might be freed
without much more suffering, 'though no doubt it is all right.'
Before daylight, before any one in the house was up, Clarence was
mounting the hill in the gusts that had done their work on the trees
and were subsiding with the darkness. And just as he was beginning
the descent, as the sun tipped the Hillside steeple with light, he
heard the knell, and counted the twenty-one for the years of our
Ellen--for ours she will always be.
'Somehow,' he told me, 'I could not help taking off my hat and
giving thanks for her, and then all the drops on all the boughs
began sparkling, and there was a hush on all around as if she were
passing among the angels, and a thrush broke out into a regular song
of jubilee!'
CHAPTER XXXIV--NOT IN VAIN
'Then cheerly to your work again,
With hearts new braced and set
To run untired love's blessed race,
As meet for those who face to face
Over the grave their Lord have met.
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