'I have longed to do more good on the earth than I have done! Yet you will forgive me now, father, as you have always forgiven me! You have been patient with me all my life; more patient than I have ever deserved! But I had no mother to teach me to love you as I ought, to teach me what I know now, when my death is near, and time and opportunity are mine no longer!' 'Hush! hush!' whispered the old man affrightedly; 'you will live! God is good, and knows that we have suffered enough.

The curse of the last separation is not pronounced against us! Live, live!' 'Father,' said the girl tenderly, 'we have that within us which not death itself can separate.

In another world I shall still think of you when you think of me! I shall see you even when I am no more here, when you long to see me! When you go out alone, and sit under the trees on the garden bank where I used to sit; when you look forth on the far plains and mountains that I used to look on; when you read at night in the Bible that we have read in together, and remember Antonina as you lie down sorrowful to rest; then I shall see you! then you will feel that I am looking on you! You will be calm and consoled, even by the side of my grave; for you will think, not of the body that is beneath, but of the spirit that is waiting for you, as I have often waited for you here when you were away, and I knew that the approach of the evening would bring you home again!' 'Hush! you will live!--you will live!' repeated Numerian in the same low, vacant tones.

The strength that still upheld him was in those few simple words; they were the food of a hope that was born in agony and cradled in despair.
'Oh, if I might live!' said the girl softly, 'if I might live but for a few days yet, how much I have to live for!' She endeavoured to bend her head towards her father as she spoke; for the words were beginning to fall faintly and more faintly from her lips--exhaustion was mastering her once again.

She dwelt for a moment now on the name of Hermanric, on the grave in the farm-house garden; then reverted again to her father.