LAST Tuesday night Jennie met me at the station. It is unusual for her to do so. The surprise was a delightful one to me. But as I sat down beside her in the basket wagon she did not greet me as joyously as usual. Her mien was so sober that I asked her at once the question:

"Jennie, what is the matter? You look sick."

"I am sick, John," said she; "sick at heart. Willie Gear is dead."

"Willie Gear dead!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," said Jennie. "He was skating on the pond. I suppose this warm weather has weakened the ice. It gave way. Three of the boys went in together. The other two got out. But Willie was carried under the ice."

Jennie was driving. Instead of turning up the hill from the depot she kept down the river road. "I thought you would want to go down there at once," said she. "And so I left baby with Nell and came down for you."

We rode along in silence. Willie Gear was his father's pride and pet. He was a noble boy. He inherited his mother's tenderness and patience, and with them his father's acute and questioning intellect. He was a curious combination of a natural skeptic and a natural believer. He had welcomed the first step toward converting our Bible-class into a mission Sabbath-school, and had done more than any one else to fill it up with boys from the Mill village. He was a great favorite with them all and their natural leader in village sports and games. There was no such skater or swimmer for his age as Willie Gear, and he was the champion ball-player of the village. But I remember him best as a Sabbath-school scholar. I can see even now his earnest upturned face and his large blue eyes, looking strait into his mother's answering gaze, and drinking in every word she uttered to that mission-class which he had gathered and which she every Sabbath taught. He was not very fortunate in his teacher in our own church Sabbath-school. For he took nothing on trust and his teacher doubted nothing. I can easily imagine how his soul filled with indignation at the thought of Abraham's offering up his only son as a burnt sacrifice, and how with eager questioning he plied his father, unsatisfied himself with the assurances of one who had never experienced a like perplexity, and therefore did not know how to cure it.

And Willie was really gone. Would it soften the father's heart and teach him the truth of Pascal's proverb that "The heart has reasons of its own that the reason knows not of;" or would it blot out the last remnant of faith, and leave Mr. Gear without a God as he had been without a Bible and without a Saviour?

I was still pondering these problems, wildly thinking, not aimlessly, yet to no purpose, when we reached the familiar cottage. Is it indeed true that nature has no sympathy? There seemed to me to be on all around a hush that spoke of death. There needed no sorrowful symbol of crape upon the door; and there was none. I almost think I should have known that death was in the house had no one told me.

As I was fastening my horse Mr. Hardcap came up. We entered the gate together.

"This is a hard experience for Mr. Gear," said I to Mr. Hardcap.

"The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether," replied Mr. Hardcap, severely.

I could feel Jennie tremble on my arm, but I made no response to Mr. Hardcap.

Mr. Gear opened the door for us himself before we had time to knock. He was perfectly calm and self-possessed. Jennie said afterward she should not have guessed, to have seen him elsewhere, that he had even heard of Willie's death. But I noticed that he uttered no greeting. He motioned us into the sitting-room without a word.

Here, on a sofa, lay, like a white statue, the form of the dear boy. By the side of the sofa sat the mother, her eyes red and swollen with much weeping. But the fierceness of sorrow had passed; and now she was almost as quiet as the boy whose sleep she seemed to watch; she was quite as pale.

She rose to meet us as we entered, and offered me her hand. Jennie put her arm around the poor mother's waist and kissed her tenderly. But still nothing was said.

Mr. Hardcap was the first to break the silence. "This is a solemn judgment," said he.

Mr. Gear made no reply.

"I hope, my friend," continued Mr. Hardcap, "that you will heed the lesson God is a teachin' of you, and see how fearful a thing it is to have an unbeliev'n heart. God will not suffer us to rest in our sin of unbelief. If we lay up our treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, we must expect they will take to themselves wings and fly away."

Mr. Hardcap's horrible mutilation of Scripture had always impressed me in a singular manner. But I think its ludicrous side never so affected me before. What is it in me that makes me always appreciate most keenly the ludicrous in seasons of the greatest solemnity and distress? The absurdity of his misapplication of the sacred text mingled horribly with a sense of the insupportable anguish I knew he was causing. And yet I knew not how to interfere.

"I hope he was prepared," said Mr. Hardcap.

"I hope so," said Mr. Gear quietly.

"He was such a noble fellow," said Jennie to the weeping mother. She said it softly, but Mr. Hardcap's ears caught the expression.

"Nobility, ma'am," said he, "isn't a savin' grace. It's a nateral virtoo. The question is, did he have the savin' grace of faith and repentance?"

"I believe," said Mrs. Gear, earnestly, "that Willie was a Christian, if ever there was one, Mr. Hardcap."

"He hadn't made no profession of religion you know, ma'am," said Mr. Hardcap. "And the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."

Mr. Hardcap is very fond of quoting that text. I wonder if he ever applies it to himself.

"It seems kind o' strange now that he should be taken away so sudden like," continued Mr. Hardcap, "without any warnin'. And you know what the Scripture tells us. 'The wages of sin is death.'"

Mr. Gear could keep silence no longer. "I wish then," said he hoarsely, "God would pay me my wages, and let me go."

"Oh! Thomas," said his wife appealingly. Then she went up to Mr. Hardcap, and laid her hand gently on his arm. "Mr. Hardcap," said she, "it was very good of you to call on us in our sorrow. And I am sure that you want to comfort us, and do us good. But I don't believe my husband will get any good just now from what you have to say. We are stunned by the blow that came so suddenly, and must have a little time to recover from it. Would you feel offended if I asked you to go away and call again some other time?"

"The word must be spoken in season and out of season," said Mr. Hardcap doggedly. Nevertheless he turn............