Aunt Judith sat before her desk, her head bent slightly forward on her hands. There was nothing unnatural or alarming in the position, but an awful dread stole into Miss Deborah's heart and caused it to beat with a wild fear.
"Judith!" she called tremblingly; but the quiet figure never stirred, and no response came from the pallid lips. Aunt Debby flashed the light of her candle full on Miss Latimer, and then started back with an exceeding bitter cry, for the face on which the light shone so clearly was white and rigid in death. The eyes, wide-open, were fixed on the sheets of manuscript before her, as if she had been earnestly studying the closing words; and the face, though white with the pallor of the dead, still retained its own sweet expression. Looking down at the written sheets, Aunt Debby noticed the last chapter was finished, and knew Aunt Judith's life-work had ended with it.
[Illustration: The eyes, wide open, were fixed on the sheets of manuscript before her.]
"My last chapter must be written to-night, child; after that I shall please you all by taking a long, long rest." How those words rung in Miss Deborah's ears as she stood gazing on that silent figure, sitting so quietly in that awful death-hush! Not the quiver of an eyelid; not a tremble of the lip; only that great, solemn calm. It was all over now. The pain and weariness; the constant striving after the true and beautiful; the daily self-renunciation; the life so completely devoted to the service of others; and the last lingering notes of the grand, sweet song had been sung in silence and alone. "Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life," she had remarked to Aunt Debby not so long ago, "and, thank God, even in the darkest night I have never failed to find a star brightening through the gloom." Now the earthly shadows were done with for ever; the bleeding feet had trod the last steps of the thorny way, and entered by the gate into the holy Jerusalem, where "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."
Six summers has the green grass waved and sweet flowers bloomed over Aunt Judith's grave; six long, long years have come and gone since Miss Deborah entered that silent room and found the death-angel casting his dread shadow there. And what have the seasons brought? Ease to the sorrowing heart and laughter to the weeping eyes. "Time heals all wounds; one cannot mourn for ever," say the wise people, and in nine cases out of ten their words hold good, though I think there are some sorrows which no lapse of time can cure--sorrows which deepen and intensify as the years roll on; only the wound, bleeding inwardly, is hid with a sacred reverence from the gaze of the outside world, and is known to the sore-stricken heart alone.