"Nay, I think you have," he answered again; "and I am sure you will soon
have more. That little child for which you grieve, has escaped the
dangers and miseries of life; its body has perished; but he will receive
in the end the crown of life. God has given him an early victory."

I know not what it was in him that rebuked my sullen pride, and humbled
and saddened me, as I listened to this man. He was dressed in deep
mourning, and looked more serene, noble, and sweet than any I had ever
seen. He was young, too, as I have said, and his voice very clear and
harmonious. He talked to me for a long time, and I listened to him with
involuntary reverence. At last, however, he left me, saying he had often
seen me walking into town, about the same hour that he used to go that
way, and that if he saw me again he would walk with me, and so we might
reason of these things together.

It was late when I returned to my home, now a house of mourning.




PART II


Our home was one of sorrow and of fear. The child's death had stricken us
with terror no less than grief. Referring it, as we both tacitly did, to
the mysterious and fiendish agency of the abhorred being whom, in an evil
hour, we had admitted into our house, we both viewed him with a degree
and species of fear for which I can find no name.

I felt that some further calamity was impending. I could not hope that we