THE BED WAS DRAPED in white, and there, beneath the drooping angel-figure, lay a little sleeping form; sleeping never to waken.

  While St. Clare stood beside his child's body, Rosa came softly into the room with a basket of white flowers. She stepped back, when she saw St. Clare, but seeing that he did not notice her, she came forward to place them around the dead child.

  The door opened again, and Topsy, her eyes swollen with crying, entered, holding up something under her apron.

   "You must go out," said Rosa; "you haven't any business here."

  "O, do let me! I brought a flower, such a pretty one!" said Topsy, holding up a half-blown tea rosebud.

  "Let her stay!" said St. Clare. "She shall come."

  Topsy came forward and laid her offering at Eva's feet; then suddenly, with a wild and bitter cry, she threw herself on the floor and wept aloud.

  Miss Ophelia hastened into the room, and tried to raise and silence the child, but in vain.

  "Get up, child," said Miss Ophelia, in a softened voice; "don't cry so. Miss Eva has gone to heaven; she is an angel."

  "She said she loved me!" cried Topsy—"she did! Oh, dear! oh, dear! there ain't nobody left now, there ain't !"

  Miss Ophelia raised her gently, but firmly, and took her from the room. "Topsy, you poor child," she said, as she led her into her room, "don't give up! I can love you, though I am not like that dear child. I hope I have learned something of the love of Christ from her. I can love you; I do, and I'll try to help you to grow up a good Christian girl."

  Miss Ophelia's voice was more than her words, and more than that were the honest tears that rolled down her face. From that hour she had an influence over the mind of the destitute child, that grew ever stronger.

  There were, for a while, soft whisperings and foot-falls in the beautiful room, as one after another stole in, to look at the dead favorite: and then came the little coffin, and then there was the funeral, and carriages drove to the door, and strangers came, and were seated; and there were white scarfs and ribbons, and crape bands, and mourners dressed in black; and there were

  Nor was it! not Eva, but onty the frail seed of that bright, immortal form with which she shall yet come forth, in the day of the Lord Jesus.

  In a few days the St. Clare family were back again in the city; Augustine, with the restlessness of grief, longing for another scene, to change the current of his thoughts. So they left the house and the garden, with its little grave, and went back to New Orleans.

  Tom, who was always uneasily following his master about, one day saw him go into his library, and, after vainly waiting for him to come out, determined to make an errand in. He entered softly. St. Clare lay on his couch, at the further end of the room. He was lying on his face, with Eva's Bible open before him, at a little distance. Tom walked up, and stood by the sofa. He hesitated; and, while he was hesitating, St. Clare suddenly raised himself up. The honest face, so full of grief, and with such an imploring expression of affection and sympathy, struck his master. He laid his hand on Tom's, and bowed down his forehead on it.

  "O, Tom, my boy, the whole world is as empty as an eggshell."

  "I know it, mas'r—I know it," said Tom; "but, oh, if mas'r could only look up—up where our dear Miss Eva is—up to the dear Lord Jesus!"

  "Ah, Tom! I do look up; but the trouble is, I don't see anything when I do. I wish I could."

  Tom sighed heavily, as he listened.

  "It seems to be given to children, and to poor, honest fellows, like you, to see what we can't," said St. Clare. "How comes it?"

  "Thou hast hid from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes," murmured Tom; "even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight."

  "Who knows anything about anything? " said St. Clare, his eyes wandering dreamily, and speaking to himself. "Was all that beautiful love and faith only one of the ever-shifting phases of human feeling, having nothing real to rest on, passing away with the little breath? And is there no more Eva, no heaven, no Christ, nothing?"

  "O, dear mas'r, there is! I know it; I'm sure of it," said Tom, falling on his knees. "Do, do, dear mas'r, believe it!"

  Tom spoke with fast running tears and a choking voice. St. Clare leaned his head on his shoulder, and wrung the hard, faithful, black hand.

  "Tom, you love me," he said.

  "I's willin' to lay down my life, this blessed day, to see mas'r a Christian."

  "Poor, foolish boy!" said St. Clare, half-raising himself. "I'm not worth the love of one good, honest heart like yours."

  "O, mas'r dere's more than me loves you; the blessed Lord Jesus loves you."

  "How do you know that, Tom?" said St. Clare.

  "Feels it in my soul. O, mas'r, the 'love of Christ passeth knowledge.'"

  "Singular," said St. Clare, turning away, "that the story of a man that lived and died eighteen hundred years ago can affect people so yet. But he was no man," he added, suddenly. "No man ever had such long and living power! O, that I could believe what my mother taught me, and pray as I did when I was a boy!"

  "If mas'r pleases," said Tom, "Miss Eva used to read this so beautifully. I wish mas'r'd be so good as to read it. I don't get no readin', hardly, now Miss Eva's gone."

  The chapter was the eleventh of John, the touching story of the raising of Lazarus. St. Clare read it aloud, often pausing to wrestle down feelings which were roused by the pathos of the story. Tom knelt before him, with clasped hands, and an absorbed expression of love, trust, and adoration on his quiet face.

  "Tom," said his master, "this is all real to you?"

  "I can jest fairly see it, mas'r," said Tom.

  "I wish I had your eyes, Tom."

  "If mas'r would only pray!"

  "How do you know I don't, Tom?"

  "Does mas'r?"

  "I would, Tom, if there was anybody there when I pray; but it's all speaking unto nothing, when I do. But come, Tom, you pray, now and show me how."

  Tom's heart was full; he poured it out in prayer, like waters that have been long suppressed. One thing was plain enough, Tom thought there was somebody to hear, whether there were or not. In fact, St. Clare felt himself borne, on the tide of his faith and feeling, almost to the gates of heaven—the heaven he seemed so vividly to conceive. It seemed to bring him nearer to Eva.

  Week after week glided away at the St. Clare mansion, and the waves of life settled back to their usual flow, where the little bark had gone down.

  St. Clare was, in many respects, another man. He read his little Eva's Bible seriously and honestly; he thought more soberly and practically of his

  "Well, Tom," he said to him, the day after he had commenced the legal formalities for his enfranchisement, "I am going to make a free man of you; so have your trunk packed, and get ready to set out for Kentucky."

  The sudden light of joy that shone in Tom's face as he raised his hands to heaven, his emphatic "Bless the Lord!" rather discomposed St. Clare; he did not like it that Tom should be so ready to leave him.

  "You haven't had very bad times here, that you need be in such a rapture over this, Tom," he said.

  "No, mas'r, 'tain't that; it's bein' a free man! That's what I'm joyin' over, mas'r."

  "Why, Tom, don't you think, for your own part, you've been better off than to be free?"

  "No indeed, Mas'r St. Clare," said Tom, with a flash of energy. "No indeed!"

  "Why, Tom, you could not possibly have earned, by your own work, such clothes and such living as I have given you."

  "Knows all that, Mas'r St. Clare; mas'r's been too good; but, mas'r, I'd rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything, and have 'em mine, than have the best, and have 'em any man's else; I had so, mas'r; I think it's natur', mas'r."

  "I suppose so, Tom, and you'll be going off and leaving me, in a month or so," he added, rather discontentedly. "Though why you shouldn't, no mortal knows," he said, in a gayer tone; and, getting up, he began to walk the floor.

  "Not while mas'r is in trouble," said Tom. "I'll stay with mas'r as long as he wants me—so as I can be of any use."

  "Not while I am in trouble, Tom?" said St. Clare, looking sadly out of the window. "And when will my trouble be over?"

  "When Mas'r St. Clare's a Christian, " said Tom.

  "And you really mean to stay by me till that day comes?" said St. Clare, half smiling, as he turned from the window, and laid his hands on Tom's shoulder. "Ah, Tom, you soft, silly boy! I won't keep you till that day. Go home to your wife and children, and give them my love."

  Marie St. Clare felt Eva's loss as deeply as she could feel anything; and, as she was a woman that had a great faculty of making everybody unhappy when she was, her immediate attendants had still stronger reason to regret

  Miss Ophelia felt the loss; but, in her good and honest heart, it bore fruit unto everlasting life. She was more softened, more gentle; and, though equally assiduous in every duty, it was with a chastened and quiet air, as one who communed with her own heart not in vain. She was more diligent in teaching Topsy—taught her mainly from the Bible—did not any longer shrink from her touch, or manifest an ill-repressed disgust, because she felt none. She viewed her now through the softened medium that Eva's hand had first held before her eyes, and saw in her only an immortal creature, whom God had sent to be led by her to glory and virtue. Topsy did not at once become a saint; but the life and death of Eva did work a marked change in her. The callous indifference was gone; there was now sensibility, hope, desire, and the striving for good—a strife irregular, interrupted, suspended oft, but yet renewed again.

  One day, when Topsy had been sent for by Miss Ophelia, she came, hastily thrusting something into her bosom.

  "What are you doing there, you limb? You've been stealing something, I'll be bound, " said the imperious little Rosa, who had been sent to call her, seizing her, at the same time roughly by the arm.

  "You go 'long, Rosa," said Topsy, pulling away from her;" 'tain't none o' your business!"

  "None o' your sa'ce!" said Rosa. "I saw you hiding something, I know yer tricks," and Rosa seized her arm, and tried to force her hand into her bosom, while Topsy enraged, kicked and fought valiantly for what she considered her rights. The clamor and confusion of the battle drew Miss Ophelia and St. Clare both to the spot.

  "She's been stealin'!" said Rosa.

  "I hain't, neither!" vociferated Topsy, sobbing with passion.

  "Give me whatever it is!" said Miss Ophelia, firmly.

  Topsy hesitated; but on a second order, pulled out of her bosom a little parcel done up in the foot of one of her own old stockings.

  Miss Ophelia turned it out. There was a small book, which had been given to Topsy by Eva, containing a single verse of Scripture, arranged for every day in the year, and in a paper the curl of hair that Eva had given her on that memorable day, when she had taken her last farewell.

  St. Clare was a good deal affected at the sight of it; the little book had been rolled in a long strip of black crape, torn from the funeral weeds.

  "Why did you wrap this round the book?" asked St. Clare, holding up the crape.

  "Cause—cause—cause twas Miss Eva's. Oh, don't take 'em away, please, don't" she cried; and, sitting flat down on the floor, and putting her apron over her head, she began to sob vehemently.

  It was a curious mixture of the pathetic and the ludicrous—the little, old stocking, black crape, text-book, fair, soft curl, and Topsy's utter distress.

  St. Clare smiled; but there were tears in his eyes, as he said: "Come, come, don't cry; you shall have them!" and, putting them all together, he threw them into her lap, and drew Miss Ophelia with him into the parlor.

  "I really think you can make something of that concern," he said, pointing with his thumb backward over his shoulder. "Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good. You must try to do something with her, Cousin."

  "The child has improved greatly," said Miss Ophelia. "I have great hopes of her; but, Augustine," she said, laying her hand on his arm, "one thing I want to ask; whose is this child to be? yours or mine?"

  "Why, I gave her to you," replied St. Clare.

  "But not legally; I want her to be mine legally. I want you to give me a deed of gift, or some legal paper."

  "Well, well," said St. Clare, "I will."

  "But I want it done now," said Miss Ophelia. "Come, here's paper, pen and ink; just write a paper."

  "Why, what's the matter?" said St. Clare. "Can't you take my word?"

  "I want to make sure of it," said Miss Ophelia. "You may die or fail, and then Topsy would be hustled off to an auction in spite of all I could do."

  "Really, you are quite provident. Well, seeing I'm in the hands of a Yankee, there is nothing for it but to concede;" and St. Clare rapidly wrote off a deed of gift. "There, now she is yours, body and soul," said St. Clare, handing her the paper.

  "No more mine than she was before," said Miss Ophelia. "Nobody but God has any right to give her to me; but I can protect her now."

  "Well, she's yours by a fiction of law then, " said St. Clare, as he turned back into the parlor, and sat down to his paper.

  Miss Ophelia, who seldom sat much in Marie's company, followed him into the parlor, having first carefully laid away the paper.

  "Augustine," she said, suddenly, as she sat knitting, "have you ever made any provision for your servants, in case of your death?"

  "No," replied St. Clare, as he read on.

  "Then all your indulgence to them may prove a great cruelty by and by."

  St. Clare had often thought the same thing himself; but he answered, carelessly: "Well, I mean to make a provision by and by."

  "When?" asked Miss Ophelia.

  "Oh, one of these days."

  "What if you should die first?"

  "Cousin, what's the matter?" said St. Clare, laying down his paper and looking at her. "Do you think I show symptoms of yellow fever or cholera, that you are making post mortem arrangements with such zeal?"

  "In the midst of life we are in death," said Miss Ophelia.

  St. Clare rose, and laying down the paper, carelessly walked to the door that stood open upon the veranda, to put an end to a conversation that was not agreeable to him. Mechanically he repeated the last word again—"Death" and as he leaned against the railing, and watched the sparkling water as it rose and fell in the fountain; and, as in a dim, dizzy haze, saw flowers and trees and vases of the courts, he repeated again the mystic word so common in every mouth, yet of such fearful power—"DEATH!" "Strange that there should be such a word," he said, "and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!"

  It was a warm, golden evening; and, as he walked to the other end of the veranda, he saw Tom busily intent on his Bible, pointing, as he did so, with his finger to each successive word, and whispering them to himself with an earnest air.

  "Want me to read to you, Tom?" asked St. Clare, seating himself carelessly by his side.

  "If mas'r please," said Tom, gratefully, "mas'r makes it so much plainer to me."

  St. Clare took the book and glanced at the place, and began reading one of the passages which Tom had designated by the heavy marks around it. It ran as follows:

  "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all his holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." St. Clare read on in an animated voice, till he came to the last of the verses.

  "Then shall the king say unto them on his left hand, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked and ye clothed me not: I was sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.' Then shall they answer unto Him: 'Lord, when saw we thee an

  St. Clare seemed struck with this last passage, for he read it twice—the second time slowly, and as if he were revolving the words in his mind.

  "Tom," said he, "these folks that get such hard measure seem to have been doing just what I have—living good, easy, respectable lives, and not troubling themselves to inquire how many of their brethren were hungry, or athirst, or sick, or in prison."

  Tom did not answer.

  St. Clare rose and walked thoughtfully up and down the veranda, seeming to forget everything in his own thoughts; so absorbed was he that Tom had to remind him twice that the tea-bell had rung before he could get his attention.

  St. Clare was absent-minded and thoughtful all tea-time. After tea, he and Marie and Miss Ophelia took possession of the parlor, almost in silence.

  Marie disposed herself on a couch, under a silken mosquito curtain, and was soon sound asleep. Miss Ophelia silently busied herself with her knitting, and St. Clare sat down to the piano and began playing a soft and melancholy selection. He seemed in a deep reverie, and to be soliloquizing to himself by music. After a little he opened one of the drawers, took out an old music book whose leaves were yellow with age, and began turning it over.

  "There," said he to Miss Ophelia, "this was one of my mother's books, and here is her handwriting; come and look at it. She copied and arranged this from Mozart's Requiem. It was something she used to sing often, I think I can hear her now."

  He struck a few majestic chords, and began singing that grand old Latin piece, the Dies Irae.

  Tom, who was listening in the outer veranda, was drawn by the sound to the very door, where he stood earnestly. He did not understand the words, of course, but the music and the manner of singing appeared to affect him strongly, especially when St. Clare sang the more pathetic parts. Tom would have sympathized more heartily if he had known the meaning of the beautiful words.

  St. Clare threw a deep, pathetic expression into the words; for the shadowy veil of years seemed drawn away, and he seemed to hear his mother's own voice leading his. Voice and instrument seemed both living, and threw out with vivid sympathy those strains which the ethereal Mozart first conceived as his own dying requiem.

  When St. Clare was done singing, he sat leaning his head upon his hand a few moments, and then began walking up and down the floor.

  "What a sublime conception is that of the last judgment!" said he—"a righting of the wrongs of all ages! A solving of all moral problems, by an unanswerable wisdom! It is, indeed, a wounderful image."

  "It is a fearful one to us," said Miss Ophelia.

  "It ought to be to me, I suppose," said St. Clare, thoughtfully. "I was reading to Tom this afternoon, that chapter in Matthew that gives an account of it, and I have been quite struck with it. One should have expected some terrible enormities charged to those who are excluded from Heaven, as the reason; but no—they are condemned for not doing positive good, as if that included every possible harm."

  "Perhaps," said Miss Ophelia, "it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm."

  "And what," said St. Clare, speaking with deep feeling, "what shall be said of one whose heart, whose education, and the wants of society, have called in vain to some nobler purpose; who has floated on, a dreamy, neutral spectator of the struggles, agonies, and wrongs of man, when he should have been a worker?"

  "I should say that he ought to repent and begin now," said Miss Ophelia.

  "Always practical and to the point," said St. Clare, smiling. "You never leave me any time for reflections, cousin; you always bring me short up against the actual present: you have a kind of eternal now always in your mind."

  "Now is all the time I have anything to do with," said Miss Ophelia.

  "Dear little Eva—poor child'!" said St. Clare, "she had set her little simple soul on a good work for me."

  It was the first time since Eva's death that he had ever said as much as these few words about her, and he spoke now evidently repressing very strong feeling.

  There was a pause of some moments; and St. Clare's countenance was overcast by a sad, dreamy expression.

  "I don't know what makes me think of my mother so much to-night," he said. "I have a strange kind of feeling as if she were near me. I keep thinking of her and of things she used to say. Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!"

  St. Clare walked up and down the room for some few minutes, and then said: "I believe I'll go down the street, a few moments, and hear the news."

  He took his hat and passed out. Tom followed him to the passage, out of the court, and asked if he should attend him.

  "No, my boy, not to-night," said St. Clare. "I shall be back in an hour."

  Tom sat on the veranda. It was a beautiful moonlight evening, and he sat and watched the rising and falling spray of the fountain, and listened to its murmur. Tom thought of his home, and how he would soon be free a

  St. Clare had turned into a cafe, to look over an evening paper. As he was reading, a quarrel arose between two gentlemen in the room, They were both intoxicated. St. Clare and one or two others made an effort to separate them, and St. Clare received a fatal stab in the side with a bowie-knife, which he was trying to wrest from one of the men.

  The house was full of cries and lamentations, shrieks and screams, servants frantically tearing their hair, throwing themselves on the ground, or running wildly about. Tom and Miss Ophelia alone seemed to have any presence of mind; for Marie was in hysteric convulsions. At Miss Ophelia's direction, one of the couches in the parlor was hastily prepared, and the bleeding form laid upon it. St. Clare had fainted, through pain and loss of blood; but, as Miss Ophelia applied restoratives, he revived, opened his eyes, looked fixedly on them, looked earnestly around the room, his eyes traveling wistfully over every object, and finally resting on his mother's picture. The physician now arrived, and made an examination. It was evident, from the expression of his face, that there was no hope; but he applied himself to dressing the wound, and he, Miss Ophelia and Tom proceeded composedly with this work, amid the lamentations and sobs and cries of the affrighted servants, who had clustered about the doors and windows of the veranda.

  "Now we must turn out all these creatures," said the doctor. "Much depends upon his being kept perfectly quiet."

  St. Clare opened his eyes, and looked fixedly on the distressed beings, whom Miss Ophelia and the doctor were trying to urge from the apartment. "Poor creatures!" he murmured, and an expression of bitter self-reproach passed over his face. The servants yielded to Miss Opehlia's repeated request, and her assurance that their master's safety depended on their stillness and obedience.

  St. Clare could say but little; he lay with his eyes shut, but it was evident that he wrestled with bitter thoughts. After a while, he laid his hand on Tom's who was kneeling beside him, and said, "Tom, poor fellow!"

  "What, mas'r?" said Tom, earnestly.

  "I am dying!" said St. Clare, pressing his hand; "pray!"

  "If you would like a clergyman——" said the doctor.

  St. Clare shook his head, and said again to Tom, more earnestly, "Pray!" And Tom did pray, with all his mind and strength for the soul that was passing—the soul that seemed looking so steadily and mournfully from those large, melancholy blue eyes. It was literally prayer offered with strong crying and tears.

  When Tom ceased to speak, St. Clare reached out, and took his hand, looking earnestly at him, but saying nothing. He closed his eyes, but still retained his hold; for, in the gates of eternity, the black hand and the white hold each other with an eternal clasp. He murmured softly to himself at broken intervals the words he had been singing that evening.

  "His mind is wandering," said the doctor.

  "No! it is coming home at last!" said St. Clare, energetically; "at last! at last!"

  The effort of speaking exhausted him. The sinking paleness of death fell on him; but with it there fell, as if shed from the wings of some pitying spirit, a beautiful expression of peace, like that of a wearied child that sleeps.

  So he lay for a few minutes. They saw that the mighty hand was upon him. Just before the spirit parted, he opened his eyes, with a sudden light, as of joy and recognition, and said: "Mother!" and then he was gone.