"Come, come Archie, my son, don't be fooling with your old grandmother. What does it all mean? Is it a wedding, boy? Ah, yes, I mind me now; it was just so when your father was married, this day forty years ago—posies all about, on the dresser, on the bed—roses and pansies, and 'bundance o' green stuff every where," and the unconscious idiot touched the cold hands, and put her arms around the stiff neck, laying her wrinkled face to the youth's cheek, and then she would dress his hair with the flowers, weaving fantastic garlands, and twining them in and out, amid the damp locks. It was thus they found her—old Patrick and Molly—as they entered the silent room on the morning of Archie's funeral. "Is the bride ready?" asked she, unwinding her arms from the lad, and smoothing down her dress, as if to make herself presentable, "because," she continued, advancing toward Molly, and pointing to the couch, "he's waiting for her. 'Tis a beautiful home they'll have, I never dreamed of any thing so pretty; but he whispered it to me—golden streets, and pearls, and rivers of water, and trees with all manner of fruit—'tis worth while to be his bride! I never thought our Archie'd come to all this good!"

Molly put the flowers back in their places, and composed the limbs once more, and then gently led the old woman to her arm-chair in the outer room, where she relapsed into her quiet dosing way until all was over. Once only she looked up as they bore the remains from the dwelling, and asked in a deprecating voice, "why Archie didn't take her with him;" but his name did not escape her after that. The rest of her days were a blank.

Close beside his mother in a green grave they placed the crippled form, that was to come forth in the resurrection, perchance the more glorified for its earthly trial. Groups of ragged urchins from the common were there, respectful and solemn. Old playmates that were now men and women gathered around the coffin and wept as they remembered the past. Sally Bunt and Mahan Doughty were among them, but the sincerest mourners—save one—were Patrick and Molly, who had watched the young man from his infancy up, and had placed all their hopes upon him. Bowed and broken, the old man returned to the desolate cottage to minister to the doting grandmother, whose only claims upon him were that she was allied to the dead. Day after day would he and Molly ascend to the little chamber to spend all their weary leisure. There were his books, just as he had left them, with one opened and turned down upon the table. There were his clothes, hung by his own hand upon the wall, and there were the pictures with which his native talent had adorned the room.

Oh! was not the deep affection of the two simple hearts that beat so fondly to his memory, a worthy tribute? Is there more value in mines of gold and silver, or in the adoration of a fickle multitude, than in the unobtrusive homage of those loving and true, though humble ones.

Every effort of his untaught genius was to them as wondrous and beautiful as if from the pencil of a Raphael or Titian. Every object of his pleasure or regard was treasured as a sacred thing. Even the withered flowers that had bedecked his death-couch were preserved with pious care, and no unloving hand could touch a single article that had once felt the impress of the now palsied fingers. There was still one solace for the bereaved old couple, and that was the frequent visits of Kittie, who seemed to them linked in a mysterious manner with the departed.

There was a real pleasure to the three, to speak together of the absent one whose exalted merit they only knew; and the maiden grew more calm and resigned from the intercourse. Yet the grave in the beautiful cemetery was none the less green in her memory, and the white hand pointed none the less often from it to her heart, and thence upward to heaven.

THE END.