hymn, seemed to pour down its song from the very gate of heaven. It was
"Singing like an angel in the clouds."
The two children suited such a morning, the golden sunbeams turned their light brown hair to gold, and their colour was as fresh as the flowers in the garden below: how different to the feverish flush on the cheek of their mother! The joyous beauty of inanimate nature but made the contrast sadder and deeper with suffering humanity. For once, the loveliness of external nature was unheeded by Mrs. Dalton—that loveliness on which she had never before gazed without a thrill of delight and gratitude. But now, as her gaze wandered from her husband to her children, she thought but of the brief time accorded to the deep emotions of earthly love; she felt that, indeed, death had its bitterness which the hope of an hereafter might soothe, but not subdue. Tenderly she passed her hand over the bright heads that scarcely reached to her pillow; she longed to say somewhat to their father about them. But
