"He rests; he is at peace.

He and his little darling understand each other, and are happy now.

That thought bore him up to the last on his death-bed.

He always spoke of your sister as his 'little darling.' He firmly believed that she was waiting to forgive and console him in the other world--and who shall say he was deceived in that belief ?" Not I! Not anyone who has ever loved and suffered, surely! "It was out of the depths of his self-sacrificing love for the child that he drew the fatal courage to undertake the operation," continued the priest.

"Your father naturally shrank from attempting it.