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“How is your daughter?” inquired Mrs. Bell, as soon as they were seated in the small, neat parlour.

“Not so strong as when you were here yesterday,” was answered, with a faint smile. “She is sinking hourly.”

“But continues in the same tranquil, heavenly state?”

“Oh yes.” There was a sweet, yet touching earnestness in the mother’s voice. “Dear child! Her life has been pure and unselfish; and now, when her change is about to come, all is peace, and hope, and patient waiting for the time when she will be clothed upon with immortality.”

“Is she strong enough to see any one?” asked Mrs. Bell.

“The presence of others in no way disturbs her. Will you walk up into her chamber, friends?”

The two ladies ascended the narrow stairs, and Mrs. Ellis found herself, for the first time in many years, in the presence of one about to die. A slender girl, with large, mild eyes, and face almost as white as the pillow it pressed, was before her. The unmistakable signs of speedy dissolution were on the pale, shrunken features; not beautiful, in the ordinary acceptation of beauty, but from the pure spirit within. Radiant with heavenly light was the smile that instantly played upon her lips.

“How are you to-day, Anna?” kindly inquired Mrs. Bell, as she took the shadowy hand of the dying girl.

“Weaker in body than when you were here yesterday,” was answered; “but stronger in spirit.”

“I have brought Mrs. Ellis to see you. You remember Mrs. Ellis?”

Anna lifted her bright eyes to the face of Mrs. Ellis, and said–

“Oh yes, very well;” and she feebly extended her hand. The lady touched her hand with an emotion akin to awe. As yet, the scene oppressed and bewildered her. There was something about it that was dreamlike and unreal. “Death! death!” she questioned with herself; “can this be dying?”

“Your day will soon close, Anna,” said Mrs. Bell, in a cheerful tone.

“Or, as we say,” quickly replied Anna, smiling, “my morning will soon break. It is only a kind of twilight here. I am waiting for the day-dawn.”

“My dear young lady,” said Mrs. Ellis, with much earnestness, bending over the dying girl as she spoke–the newness and strangeness of the scene had so wrought upon her feelings, that she could not repress their utterance–“Is all indeed as you say? Are you inwardly so calm, so hopeful, so confident of the morning? Forgive me such a question, at such a moment. But the thought of death has ever been terrible to me; and now, to see a fellow-mortal standing, as you are, so near the grave, and yet speaking in cheerful tones of the last agony, fills me with wonder. Is it all real? Are you so full of heavenly tranquillity?”

Was the light dimmed in Anna’s eyes by such pressing questions? Did they turn her thoughts too realizingly upon the “last agony?” Oh no! Even in the waning hours of life, her quickest impulse was to render service to another. Earnest, therefore, was her desire to remove from the lady’s mind this fear of death, even though she felt the waters of Jordan already touching her own descending feet.

“God is love,” she said, and with an emphasis that gave to the mind of Mrs. Ellis a new appreciation of the words. “In his love he made us, that he might bless us with infinite and eternal blessings, and these await us in heaven. And now that he sends an angel to take me by the hand and lead me up to my heavenly home, shall I tremble and fear to accompany the celestial messenger? Does the child, long separated from a loving parent, shrink at the thought of going home, or ask the hours to linger? Oh no!”

“But all is so uncertain,” said Mrs. Ellis, eager to penetrate further into the mystery.

“Uncertain!” There was something of surprise in the voice of Anna May. “God is truth as well as love; and both in his love and truth he is unchangeable. When, as Divine Truth, he came to our earth, and spake as never man spake, he said, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.’ The heavens and the earth may pass away, Mrs. Ellis, but not a jot or tittle of the divine word can fail.”