gleam of light on a dead face that for many a year had never been
illuminated from within by the brightness of self-forgetting love or
kindly sympathy. If you had raised the sheet, you would have seen no
happy smile as of a half-remembered, innocent childhood; the smile--is
it of peaceful memory or serene anticipation?--that sometimes shines on
the faces of the dead.

Such life-secrets as were exposed by Death, and written on that still
countenance in characters that all might read, were painful ones. Flossy
Morrison was dead. The name "Flossy" was a relic of what she termed her
better days (Heaven save the mark!), for she had been called Mrs.
Morrison of late years,--"Mrs. F. Morrison," who took "children to
board, and no questions asked"--nor answered. She had lived forty-five
years, as men reckon summers and winters; but she had never learned, in
all that time, to know her Mother, Nature, her Father, God, nor her
brothers and sisters, the children of the world. She had lived
friendless and unfriendly, keeping none of the ten commandments, nor yet
the eleventh, which is the greatest of all; and now there was no human
being to slip a flower into the still hand, to kiss the clay-cold lips
at the remembrance of some sweet word that had fallen from them, or drop
a tear and say, "I loved her!"

Apparently, the two watchers did not regard Flossy Morrison even in the
light of "the dear remains," as they are sometimes called at country
funerals. They were in the best of spirits (there was an abundance of
beer), and their gruesome task would be over in a few hours; for it was
nearly four o'clock in the morning, and the body was to be taken away at
ten.

"I tell you one thing, Ettie, Flossy hasn't left any bother for her