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I like to do what those wise sayings tell one.'

She has all sorts of odd fancies,' continued Pierce, in a shy hesitating tone. 'Such people always have. You mustn't listen to her if she talks, but go on with your work, whatever it is.'

Nell stared at him in dismay and astonishment. She wasn't to talk, and she wasn't to listen! In her perplexity she began to sob quite violently.

'Don't, don't!' cried the old man, patting her flaxen head; 'you mustn't cry-that would do her more harm than anything.'

Nell gulped down her sobs, dashed vehemently at the drops that fell down her cheeks, and, biting her rosy lips, returned to the trunk, from which she gathered up in her tiny arms a great heap of clothing. This accomplished, she approached the bed on tip-toe.

'I'm going to undress you,' she said, in a little low voice like a dove's coo. 'You'll feel much better when you get these black things off."

'I am thirsty,' murmured the woman-' so thirsty!'

'I'll get you a draught of beautiful cold water. The wine is in the cellar, and I can't get at it,' the child explained deprecatingly.

The water was drunk eagerly. 'You are very kind, little one. How shall I thank you?'

Nell couldn't trust herself to answer calmly. This excessive gentleness, in one whom she had known so haughty and imperious, touched her to the very core. She folded a white wrapper round the shadowy form, and let the sufferer lie quiet and undisturbed until Pierce returned.

The doctor left a prescription, but said little. It was evident that to his practised eye insidious disease had completely sapped the woman's youth and strength. She

was in the last stage of decline, and he told Nell so, when she crept out into the passage after him.

'She may live for weeks, or a few days may end her,' he said gently. The beautiful face-beautiful even in wreck-had appealed to him. 'I do not believe she has strength to last very long.'

And, sir, she went away so bright and well,' murmured Nell huskily; 'it's dreadful to think of! Poor Miss Ursula !'

There was no consolation to offer, and the doctor was hurrying away, when Ralph Pierce came out and spoke to him, while Nell went back to the sick-room. 'No hope!'

Ralph Pierce knew that from the first. The doctor only confirmed his conviction.

For three days the old man and the child watched together by the bed, for the woman never sat up again. She did not suffer much pain, except when a frightful paroxysm of coughing seized her; but the powerful opiate administered caused her to lie still, half dreamily, the greater portion of the time.

When they spoke to her, she would try and rouse herself for a brief space, essaying to smile gratefully for the little services rendered; and sometimes they would see her still red lips part, and hear her praying, in broken whispers-prayers for forgiveness and resignation and faith.

Ralph Pierce's distress was so poignant that, more than once unable to control it, he was forced to leave the room. The woman perceived this, and her composure would be so disturbed that agitation brought back the racking cough and sharp pain that were wearing her life so quickly away.

'Don't let father grieve,' she said to Nell. Tell him I am happy, very happy, much happier than life

can make me. I only fret at leaving him now; and if it wasn't for that I should be glad to go, Nell, there, where the weary are at

rest.'

'O Miss Ursula, you are grown so good; you'll be sure to see her! Tell her, father and I and Lennard miss her every day. Maybe she'll ask up there for us all to come to her soon!'

It was the close of the third day. Nell was sitting by the patient, and Pierce, broken-hearted and broken down by trouble and watching, lay on a sofa in the next room.

The woman had been silent and motionless for a long time. Nell could see that she slept at intervals, and that a lovely peaceful smile hovered over her mouth, as if in her dreams some good angel had brought a vision of the peace and rest that awaited her. She woke with a start, opened her eyes that looked doubly large from the deep shadows beneath them, and glanced vaguely about. Her eyes fell on Nell.

'Did you hear it?' she whispered. 'What?' asked the child, a little awed by the question, and the rapt expression that had stolen over the poor white face.

'The music-such beautiful music! Hush, oh, hush! I hear it yet! It is the angels singing!

She lifted one slender hand; her black eyes grew eager and wistful; a radiance, a glory, which were not of this world, beamed in them.

A terrible fear came over Nell. She knew what the change meant. The woman was dying.

'Don't you hear?' she faltered feebly.

The child could not answer, her

tongue clove to her mouth.

not afraid! Call father, Nell. The music, oh, the music!'

Nell bent over her, and kissed her forehead. The pallid lips moved, and she heard the voice, grown supernaturally low, say, The Lord is my shepherd-He leadeth me in green pastures-He maketh me to lie down beside the still waters.'

Nell stole into the next room, and gently shook the old man, who slept. Her touch roused him

at once.

'Is my child worse?' he cried, staggering to his feet.

Nell could not reply the look in her little face was quite enough. Pierce knew that the end had come, and hurried to the bedside. Nell followed him, and dropped on her knees.

'My child! O my darling she heard him exclaim.

The dying woman turned her eyes on his face, and she struggled hard to speak.

'Don't grieve, father — don't grieve! I am going! Take me in your arms to say good-bye!'

He sat down on the side of the bed, and lifted the wasted figure until the head, with its rich lustrous hair, rested on his breast.

'Don't fret, father, don't! Put your arms around me; it's only for a very little while, then you'll meet us yonder-me and mother!'

The struggle of the sweet voice died away. There was a heavy breath, then the head fell back, and the large black eyes gazed upwards with the stony stare of death.

Nell rose up from her shaking knees.

'Don't, oh, don't grieve, Mr. Pierce-she sees you, perhaps, and it troubles her. The angels have

It is Lennard's violin,' she said, her in their arms now, and she will be among them, bidding Miss Ursula welcome!'

at last.

'I know,' the woman murmured, and it is something beyond, as well. I am dying: don't cry-I'm

CHAPTER XLIV.

BERNARD'S VISIT.

THE Same evening Nell sat in the death-chamber, together with an old woman who had been hired to watch.

The

Very silent and sad the deathchamber was. The pale face of the dead, cold and beautiful as though sculptured in marble, was crowned by a chaplet of white roses which Lennard had spent half a week's money to purchase. window was cpen, and the cool night wind stirred the curtain, and a low soft strain of music stole in with it. It was Lennard's violin. The boy could not rest with death in the house, and poured his sorrow out in sounds that seemed to be calling that spirit home with plaintive cries.

Ralph Pierce had gone out; duty awaited him among the famished souls gathering in the old barn-like building. He had carried the burden of his own grief there, believing that the dead would hear him better from that place, and know that he had not fainted at his post.

Nell was startled by the sound of a man's step on the stairs. She glanced at the old watcher, but the woman, bolt upright in her chair, slept as sound as a top; and thinking it was Pierce returning, the child opened the door that the gleam of the lamp might guide him in.

But instead of Ralph Pierce, Nell stood face to face with Bernard Keane. This was the third visit he had paid to Liverpool. His career, as an artist, had been unsuccessful; his finances so meagre that he had almost starved to pay the expenses of his journeys. The first two had been futile. The rooms were empty-Ursula and her father gone-no knowledge of their whereabouts-and sick at

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Nell stood as if rooted to the floor, her big blue eyes full of tears, a piteous pleading in her features.

'What is the matter, Nell? Is she not here?'

'She is here, Mr. Keane—but— but the child paused.

'But what?' exclaimed Bernard angrily, jealous suspicions thronging in upon his mind, and John Lock's face rising up before him. 'Doesn't she want to see me?'

'She can't see you, Mr. Keane ; for-for-' Nell wrung her small fingers, then burst out plaintively, 'for Miss Ursula is-is-she has gone among the angels, Mr. Keane!'

Child, are you crazy? What nonsense are you talking? Stand back, and let me go in !'

'No, don't go in-maybe you'll be frightened; for though her soul is gone, her body is there!' and she pointed with a tiny finger to the inner room.

Bernard Keane sprang forward, stood a moment on the threshold, then fell upon his knees.

'Dead he groaned; 'dead!'

He looked hard at the rigid features crowned with flowers, then buried his face in his hands.

'Why didn't you write?' he muttered hoarsely.

'How could I? Nell answered, in a whisper. 'I didn't know where.'

'O Ursula, my own! If I had only kissed your lips once more before they grew white in death, I should be better able to bear!'

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'Yes; I cared for her, and so did Lennard; but it's of no use now. Miss Ursula is gone where we can't reach her with our love or our hate. And maybe she's glad to be rid of us now she's with the angels, that sing all day and all night round the lovely White Throne.'

'Where is her father?'

'Gone. I don't know where. He said nothing; but took his hat with a great heavy sigh and went away.'

'I had something to tell him, but it's all over now. My poor darling, it's useless now!'

The young man's grief nearly broke Nell's heart.

'Don't take on like that, Mr. Keane; it won't bring her back.'

'I know it, I know it! Nothing will bring her back. Tell me, Nell: was she cared for?'

'I nursed her days, and the old man took care of her at nights. She was never left alone.'

'Did she never speak of me, Nell-?'

'Often and often, when you first went away, but this time she was too weak and ill to talk.'

'And she never spoke my name at the last-not once?' he asked wistfully.

'No; not once that I can remember.'

There was a long silence. Then Bernard Keane stooped and pressed a farewell kiss on the cold lips of his wife, and left the room.

Two days after, a quiet and humble funeral passed through the gate of a little churchyard situated in the outskirts of Liverpool; and a small group of mourners stood by while the grave was filled.

One of the mourners was an old man, tall, but bent and spare, and whose hair had drifted into the whiteness of snow. The others were a diminutive man, who wept much, and two children-a boy and a girl-who, hand in hand, sobbed as the coffin was lowered out of sight.

After they had gone, Bernard Keane came out from a clump of trees behind which he had lingered, and all that long dreary night he remained by Ursula's newly-made grave.

CHAPTER XLV.

LENNARD GROWS DOWNHEARTED.

RALPH PIERCE did not return home after his daughter was laid in her narrow grave, and Bernard Keane sought for him in vain.

Bernard had resolved to go to America. Fortune had not been kind to him in England, and America held his mother, who was still the dearest to his heart. As for Nell, she had no time for the indulgence of her grief; but with a quick impressionable nature like hers, it was impossible that an experience like that through which she had passed so recently should not have a strong and lasting ef fect.

Nell was as active and energetic as ever; but she had grown more gentle and more capable of comprehending Lennard's wayward fancies, and better able to sympathise with his varying moods, than she had ever been before.

She could see that the boy was terribly changed. He was more

restless and excitable; he neither ate nor slept, and all the little titbits her humble purse could furnish only seemed to distress him, for he could not partake of them.

So one day Nell broke down completely.

She had tried everything in her power, and her last resource had given way so entirely, that she had recourse to tears-a childish refuge which the brave little creature valiantly struggled against.

The night before, in deference to the advice of the lame and purblind sempstress who lodged in the same house, Nell had expended her carefully-hoarded coppers in the purchase of dried poppies with which she had stuffed a pillow, hoping it would have a soporific effect; but Lennard had flung it on the floor, pettishly asking if his sister wanted to suffocate him.

It was too much; it was the last straw that broke the camel's back. Nell burst out crying.

'I didn't mean to be cross, Nell -indeed I didn't!' Lennard said contritely. Go to bed, and I'll sleep, I daresay.'

But he didn't sleep. Hours after Nell heard him tossing about on his little couch, and every movement pressed sorely on her heart. She got a headache for the first time in her life; and when the day dawned she rose with a beating and throbbing of her temples that frightened herself.

Lennard tried to swallow a mouthful at breakfast, and failed. Then, when he went out, Nell sat down and indulged in a grand cry all by herself, and felt the better for it, as anything feminine usually does after such an outburst.

It was late when the boy came back, and his sister had become so anxious about him that she was thinking of going to the Prince's Theatre, when he returned.

He looked so thin and pale and worn out that a new pang went through her; but she had learned, with feminine quickness, that any display of anxiety only vexed him. So she got up as much of a smile as she could manage, and said cheerfully,

'I began to think you were lost, Lennard. I'll get some hot water and make you a cup of tea.'

'I don't want it,' he answered wearily; 'let me lie down and be quiet.'

He flung himself on the bedstead with one thin arm thrown half across his face, and Nell saw great glittering drops slowly rolling down his cheeks.

She could not bear this silent grief. So she fell down on her knees and put her arms round him.

'What is it, Lennard? Do tell me! I can understand. It breaks my heart to see you like this.'

'You are a good girl, Nell!' he replied, still keeping his face hidden. I am ashamed to be such a baby, but I can't help it; I am so wretched, you know!'

'What is it, Lennard! Do tell me! It's about her, I know.'

'She's gone, Nell; they have taken her away!' The utter desolation in the boy's voice was inexpressibly touching.

'Gone-where ?'

'To America, to live for always!' 'But they'll surely come back, Lennard. Their home is in Liverpool.'

'O Nell, you can't comfort me! I cannot believe I shall ever see her again. It is this that makes me ill, so that I cannot sleep or eat. You don't know, Nell; you don't know!'

A sob broke upon his utterance here.

'I don't know about such feelings myself, Lennard; but I love you so, that I can understand

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