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“And will the good angels watch over me, and be to me as a mother?” again asked the child.

“Far, far better than any earthly parent, my dear one.”

A radiant smile illumined the countenance of the dying child. The fond words of her mother were sweet music to her ear.

The father approached, and bent over her.

“My little Eva,” he whispered, “will you not speak to me?”

“I love you, dear father,” was the earnest answer, “and when I am in Heaven I will pray for you, and for my poor mother;” and again those speaking eyes were riveted upon the mother’s face, as if she would read her inmost griefs.

The physician entered, and, in the vain hope of prolonging life, judged it necessary to make some external applications to relieve the difficulty of breathing, which was fast increasing. The pain was borne without a murmur.

“Do I not try to be patient, mother?” whispered that little voice.

“Yes, darling, you are a dear, patient, good little girl.”

An expression of happiness, amounting almost to rapture, beamed in Eva’s face, at these words of unqualified praise.

“Oh, mother! dear, dear mother,” she exclaimed, “will you not always call your little Eva your dear, good little girl? Oh, I will try to be so very good if you will. My heart is so glad now,” and with the strength produced by the sudden excitement, she clasped her feeble arms about her mother’s neck.

“Her mind begins to wander,” whispered the physician to the father; but there was no reply. A sudden light had broken upon that stern man, and motionless he stood, and listened to the words of his dying child.

But she had already sunk back in an apparent slumber, and hour after hour those calm but agonized parents sat watching by her side, at times almost believing that the spirit had indeed gone, so deep was the repose of that last earthly slumber.

At length she aroused, and with the same beautiful smile which had played upon her features when she sunk to rest, again exclaimed,

“I am so very happy, dear mother; will you call me your good little Eva once more?”

In a voice almost suffocated with emotion, the desired words were again breathed forth, and long and fervent kisses imprinted upon the child’s pale cheek.

“My heart is so glad!” she murmured. “Oh, mother, kiss my brothers when I am gone, and smile upon them and call them good. It is like the sunlight on a cloudy day.

“Put your face close to mine, dear father, and let me whisper in your ear. Call poor mother good, sometimes, and kiss her as you do me, now that I am dying, and she will never look so sad any more.”

“I will, my precious child! I will!” And the head of the strong man bowed upon his breast, and he wept.

A change passed over the countenance of the little one.

“The angels will take me now,” she whispered. The eyelids closed, there was no struggle, but the parents saw that her mission on earth was ended. Henceforth she would rejoice in the world where all is light and love.

The mother wept not as she gazed upon that lifeless clay. She wept not as she laid the little form upon the bed, and straightened the limbs already stiffening in the embrace of death; but when her husband clasped her to his bosom, and uttered words of endearing affection, a wild scream burst from her lips, and she sunk back in his arms, apparently as unconscious as the child who lay before them.

A long and alarming state of insensibility was succeeded by weeks of fever and delirium.

How many bitter but useful lessons did the husband learn as he watched by her bed-side! Often in the still hours of the night, when all save himself slumbered, she would gaze upon him with that earnest, loving, but reproachful look, which he well remembered to have seen in years gone by, and murmur,