his father as he tried to speak to him.

"Father," said he, "I have been down in the sitting-room, trying to read
my little books; but I think so much of my dear dead mother, I can't
read; and the tears come into my eyes so fast, that I can't see the
pictures. I went to rock in my little chair, but I saw my mother's empty
chair, and my little heart aches very much. It will be very lonesome and
sad here, if I don't see mother anywhere. And who will take care of this
little baby brother?"

No word was spoken by those present, but their tears and sobs told
plainly that they too felt how lonely and sad that home would be without
the gentle voice and cheerful song of that "dear mother." As no one
checked him, Willie again spoke, and, as well as he could amid sobs and
tears, told the bitterness of his young spirit.

"I love you some, father, but not as I did my mother; and now my mother
is in heaven, who shall I have to take care of me and kiss me, father;
who will say a prayer to me every night? Aunt Susan's prayers are not
like mother's; and your voice doesn't sound so sweet by the side of my
bed as my mother's did. Oh dear! what did my mother die for, and leave
me a poor little motherless boy?"

His father then took him upon his knee, wiped his tears, and soothed him
to sleep with gentle caresses. No word could David utter. For a long
time he sat with his sleeping boy, beside his dead. The paleness of his
cheek, and the frequent sigh, expressed his sorrow. His mother again
tried to draw from him an expression of his Christian fidelity, fearing
that he was untrue to his God and his Master under a trial so severe.
When at length he did speak, a hardened heart might have been moved by