was stronger than us all, and made us shrink
into solemn awestruck helplessness. Miss
Brown was dying. We hardly knew her
voice, it was so devoid of the complaining
tone we had always associated with it. Miss
Jessie told me afterwards that it, and her face
too, were just what they had been formerly,
when her mother's death left her the young
anxious head of the family, of whom only
Miss Jessie survived.

She was conscious of her sister's presence,
though not, I think, of ours. We stood a
little behind the curtain; Miss Jessie knelt
with her face near her sister's, in order to
catch the last soft awful whispers.

"Oh, Jessie! Jessie! How selfish I have
been ! God forgive me for letting you sacrifice
yourself for me as you did. I have so
loved you—and yet I have thought only of
myself. God forgive me!"

"Hush, love! hush!" said Miss Jessie,
sobbing.

"And my father! my dear, dear father! I
will not complain now, if God will give me
strength to be patient. But, oh, Jessie! tell
my father how I longed and yearned to see
him at last, and to ask his forgiveness. He
can never know now how I loved him—oh! if
I might but tell him, before I die, what a
life of sorrow his has been, and I have done so
little to cheer him!"

A light came into Miss Jessie's face. "Would
it comfort you, dearest, to think that he does
know—would it comfort you, love, to know
that his cares, his sorrows—" Her voice
quivered, but she steadied it into calmness,—
"Mary! he has gone before you to the place
where the weary are at rest. He knows now
how you loved him."

A strange look, which was not distress,
came over Miss Brown's face. She did not
speak for some time, but then we  saw her lips
form the words, rather than heard the sound
"Father, mother, Harry, Archy!"—then, as if
it was a new idea throwing a filmy shadow
over her darkening mind—"But you will be
alone—Jessie!"

Miss Jessie had been feeling this all during
the silence, I think; for the tears rolled down
her cheeks like rain, at these words; and she
could not answer at first. Then she put her
hands together tight, and lifted them up, and
said,—but not to us—

''Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
Him."

In a few moments more, Miss Brown lay
calm and still; never to sorrow or murmur
more.

After this second funeral, Miss Jenkyns
insisted that Miss Jessie should come to stay
witli her, rather than go back to the desolate
house; which, in fact, we learned from Miss
Jessie, must now be given up, as she had not
wherewithal to maintain it. She had something
about twenty pounds per annum,
besides the interest of the money for which the
furniture would sell ; but she could not live
upon that; and so we talked over her
qualifications for earning money.

"I can sew neatly," said she, "and I like
nursing. I think, too, I could manage a house,
if any one would try me as housekeeper; or I
would go into a shop, as saleswoman, if they
would have patience with me at first."

Miss Jenkyns declared, in an angry voice,
that she should do no such thing; and talked
to herself about "some people having no idea
of their rank as a Captain's daughter," nearly
an hour afterwards, when she brought Miss
Jessie up a basin of delicately-made arrowroot,
and stood over her like a dragoon until
the last spoonful was finished: then she
disappeared. Miss Jessie began to tell me some
more of the plans which had suggested
themselves to her, and insensibly fell into talking
of the days that were past and gone, and
interested me so much, I neither knew nor
heeded how time passed. We were both
startled when Miss Jenkyns reappeared, and
caught us crying. I was afraid lest she would
be displeased, as she often said that crying
hindered digestion, and I knew she wanted
Miss Jessie to get strong;  but, instead, she
looked queer and excited, and fidgeted round
us without saying anything. At last she
spoke. "I have been so much startled—no,
I've not been at all startled—don't mind me,
my dear Miss Jessie—I've been very much
surprised—in fact, I've had a caller, whom
you knew once, my dear Miss Jessie—"

Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed
scarlet, and looked eagerly at Miss Jenkyns—

"A gentleman, my dear, who wants to know
if you would see him."

"Is it?— it is not——" stammered out Miss
Jessie and got no farther.

"This is his card," said Miss Jenkyns,
giving it to Miss Jessie; and while her head
was bent over it, Miss Jenkyns went through
a series of winks and odd faces to me,
and formed her lips into a long sentence, of
which, of course, I could not understand a
word.

"May he come up?" asked Miss Jenkyns,
at last.

"Oh, yes! certainly! " said Miss Jessie,
as much as to say, this is your house, you may
show any visitor where you like. She took
up some knitting of Miss Matey's, and began
to be very busy, though I could see how she
trembled all over.

Miss Jenkyns rang the bell, and told the
servant who answered it to show Major
Campbell up-stairs; and, presently, in walked
a tall, fine, frank-looking man of forty, or
upwards. He shook hands with Miss Jessie;
but he could not see her eyes, she kept them
so fixed on the ground. Miss Jenkyns asked
me if I would come and help her to tie up
the preserves in the store-room; and, though
Miss Jessie plucked at my gown, and even
looked up at me with begging eye, I durst not
refuse to go where Miss Jenkyns asked.
Instead of tying up preserves in the store-room,