happiness."

Mr. Medwin's lips moved--he murmured something about "living again
in the Lord."

Innocent did not hear,--she was absorbed in her own mental problem
and anxious to put it before him.

"Listen!" she said--"When Priscilla told me Dad was really dead--
that he would never get off the bed where he lay so cold and white
and peaceful,--that he would never speak to me again, I said she
was wrong--that it could not be. I told her he would wake
presently and laugh at us all for being so foolish as to think him
dead. Even Hero, our mastiff, does not believe it, for he has
stayed all morning by the bedside and no one dare touch him to
take him away. And just now Priscilla has been with me, crying
very much--and she says I must not grieve,--because Dad is gone to
a better world. Then surely he must be alive if he is able to go
anywhere, must he not? I asked her what she knew about this better
world, and she cried again and said indeed she knew nothing except
what she had been taught in her Catechism. I have read the
Catechism and it seems to me very stupid and unnatural--perhaps
because I do not understand it. Can you tell me about this better
world?"

Mr. Medwin's lips moved again. He cleared his throat.

"I'm afraid," he observed--"I'm very much afraid, my poor child,
that you have been brought up in a sad state of ignorance."