melting power as that did.

By that curfew bell I had been laid in my little couch to
sleep the sleep of childish innocence. Father and mother,
sometimes the one, sometimes the other, had told me as they
bent lovingly over me night after night, what that bell said
as it tolled. Many good words has that bell spoken to me
through their translations. No wrong thing did I do through
the day which that voice from all I knew of heaven and the
great Father there did not tell me kindly about ere I sank
to sleep, speaking the words so plainly that I knew that the
power that moved it had seen all and was not angry, never
angry, never, but so very, _very_ sorry. Nor is that bell
dumb to me to-day when I hear its voice. It still has its
message, and now it sounded to welcome back the exiled
mother and son under its precious care again.

The world has not within its power to devise, much less to
bestow upon us, such reward as that which the Abbey bell
gave when it tolled in our honor. But my brother Tom should
have been there also; this was the thought that came. He,
too, was beginning to know the wonders of that bell ere we
were away to the newer land.

Rousseau wished to die to the strains of sweet music. Could
I choose my accompaniment, I could wish to pass into the dim
beyond with the tolling of the Abbey bell sounding in my
ears, telling me of the race that had been run, and calling
me, as it had called the little white-haired child, for the
last time--_to sleep_.