an only child to mourn his loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an
exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley." The
Rev. McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion,
and, indirectly attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of
her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial
effects of the "silent tomb," and in this cheerful contemplation
drove most of the children into speechless horror, and caused the
pink-and-white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse
to be comforted.

The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in little
whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the upspringing
breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the green wave which
in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew sere and dry and
hard. In those days the master, strolling in the little churchyard of
a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a few wild flowers
plucked from the damp pine forests scattered there, and oftener rude
wreaths hung upon the little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were
formed of a sweet-scented grass, which the children loved to keep in
their desks, intertwined with the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa,
and the wood anemone, and here and there the master noticed the
dark-blue cowl of the monkshood, or deadly aconite. There was something
in the odd association of this noxious plant with these memorials which
occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his esthetic
sense. One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded ridge he came
upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a prostrate pine on
a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless branches,
her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and crooning to herself one of
the Negro melodies of her younger life. Recognizing him at a distance,
she made room for him on her elevated throne, and with a grave