sitting, one at one side of her bed and one at the other. She had fallen
into a light slumber. As they were looking at her, the same thought came
into both their minds at the same moment. Old Sophy spoke for both, as
she said, in a low voice,--

"It's her mother's look,--it's her mother's own face right over
again,--she never look' so before,--the Lord's hand is on her! His will
be done!"

When Elsie woke and lifted her languid eyes upon her father's face, she
saw in it a tenderness, a depth of affection, such as she remembered
at rare moments of her childhood, when she had won him to her by some
unusual gleam of sunshine in her fitful temper.

"Elsie, dear," he said, "we were thinking how much your expression was
sometimes like that of your sweet mother. If you could but have seen
her, so as to remember her!"

The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter's heart for the
mother she had never seen, save only with the unfixed, undistinguishing
eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the under-thought that she might soon
rejoin her in another state of being,--all came upon her with a sudden
overflow of feeling which broke through all the barriers between her
heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to her father as if the
malign influence,--evil spirit it might almost be called,--which had
pervaded her being, had at last been driven forth or exorcised, and that
these tears were at once the sign and the pledge of her redeemed nature.
But now she was to be soothed, and not excited. After her tears she
slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as never before.