"Did you tell him of me?" eagerly asked Dora, on whom the name of
Uncle Nathaniel, or "Uncle Nat," as he was more familiarly called,
produced a more pleasant impression than did that of her aunt
Sarah.

"Yes", answered the mother, "it was of you that I wrote,
commending you to his care, should he return to America. And if
you ever meet him, Dora, tell him that on my dying bed I thought
of him with affection--that my mind wandered back to the years of
long ago, when I was young, and ask him, for the sake of one he
called his brother, and for her who grieves that ever she caused
him a moment's pain, to care for you, their orphan child."

Then followed many words of love, which were very precious to Dora
in the weary years which followed that sad night; and then, for a
time, there was silence in that little room, broken only by the
sound of the wailing tempest. The old year was going out on the
wings of a fearful storm, and as the driving sleet beat against
the casement, while the drifting snow found entrance through more
than one wide crevice and fell upon her pillow, the dying woman
murmured, "Lie up closer to me, Dora, I am growing very cold."

Alas! 'twas the chill of death; but Dora did not know it, and
again on the hearthstone before the fast dying coals she knelt,
trying to warm the bit of flannel, on which her burning tears fell
like rain, when through the empty wood-box she sought in vain for
chip or bark with which to increase the scanty fire.

"But I will not tell _her_," she softly whispered, when
satisfied that her search was vain, and wrapping the flannel