passionate, suffering Joanna, who is pleading with you to be your wife three short hours. Then I will die, Ralph, and not trouble you any more." He was vanquished. A groan burst from his lips. "It shall be as you say, my own first love. Oh, Joanna, God knows I would have you live! Oh, if my arms could shelter you! if my love could save you!" She smiled sadly. "It is too late now; but we must lose no time. There is a clergyman in the next room. I got all things ready. I knew you would come. I knew I should be your wife." Her look was bright and triumphant. In a few moments more the nuptial benediction had been pronounced, and the two were left again alone. She put her arms around his neck; she drew his head down upon her pillow, and then she said, while her whole face seemed to glow with the fullness of content, "There, Ralph, I am your wife. I had faith-I always knew this day would come some time. I am dying, but that matters little. My wild heart is at rest. Love me, Ralph, love me." And he did love her. Into the lap of those two hours he lavished the hoarded love of a lifetime. She died in his arms, lifting to his the fading glory of her eyes, clinging to his neck, murmuring his name. Her life had been an ovation at the shrine of her ambition -her death was a sacrifice to her love. Doubly sorrow-stricken, the Rector of Eversley bore home the dead body of his second wife. She was laid in the church-yard, with a few feet of ground between her and the gentle Alice Duncan. It was not many months before the man they had both loved, grown prematurely old and grief-stricken, laid off, at last, the worn-out armor with which he had fought his Battle of Life, and went to his long sleep between his two wives. Whose shall he be in the resurrection? Soon wilt thou wipe away my tears; Yesterday the earth was laid Over my father full of years, Him whose steps I have watched and stayed. All my work is finished here; Every slumber that shuts my eye Brings the forms of the lost and dear, This deep wound that bleeds and aches, I shall feel it no more again. BRYANT. THE RECORD OF A TROUBLED LIFE. MOLL, toll, toll!. I counted the strokes of the vil lage bell until it had numbered twenty-nine. Then they ceased, and unbidden my tears fell-tears of mingled sorrow and joy; sorrow for the long-enduring, patient, troublous life that was over; joy for the glad, new, glorious life that had begun. Bertha Whitney was dead. There were few on earth to whom these words would bring even a passing pang. She was born of poor parents, and she had been poor all the days of her life. Even her childish memories were of suffering and wrong. Her father was one of those men whose names you sometimes meet in the unread annals of the poor; an unappreciated mechanical genius, with a shy, sensitive nature, and a brain full of glorious schemes. But what might have won him fame and fortune in another sphere was only a curse to the poor machinist. With these splendid fancies running riot in his brain, how could he bear a dull, daily routine of journeyman labor, under some phlegmatic master, who was entirely incapable of appreciating a single one of his far-reaching plans? It was hardly strange that he neglected the daily toil on which his bread depended, to spend day after day alone, inventing a wonderful |