"Miss Claire, your mother wants you to come right away, and bring Miss Dora. Your father is sick."

And Claire was alert in an instant, wakening, soothing and helping the frightened Dora. She herself was not greatly alarmed. It is true, her father was not subject to sudden illnesses; but then, men were often sick, and very sick, too, while the attack lasted. She called to mind the story Nettie Stuart had told her that afternoon, how "papa was so ill the night before that they really thought he would die, and everybody in the house was up waiting on him." Yet "papa" had been at the bank that next day, looking nearly as well as usual. Had it been her frail mother who was ill, Claire felt that her pulses would have quickened more than they did now. Mamma did not seem strong enough to bear much pain, but papa was a man of iron frame, everybody said.

She told over some of these encouraging thoughts to Dora, while she helped her to dress:

"Don't tremble so, darling; there is nothing to be frightened about. Papa has one of his dreadful headaches, I presume, and mamma needs us to help care for him. You know she is not feeling so well as usual. She promised to call me the next time papa needed nursing. Men are so unused to suffering, that a pain is something terrible to them while it lasts."

They sped down the stairs together, Claire having slackened none of her speed because she believed there was no cause for alarm. Her hand was on her mother's doorknob, when the door swung open, and the mother's white face made her start back in affright.

"Where are they?" she said, in a strange, agonized voice, groping about with her hand as though she did not see distinctly, though the hall was brightly lighted. "O, children, children, you are too late! Oh, why"—and she fell senseless at their feet; and Claire was bending over her, lifting her in trembling arms, trying to speak soothing words, all the time wondering in a terror-stricken way what all this could mean! Too late for what?

They had to settle down to inevitable facts, as so many poor souls before, and since, have had to do. Of course, the first wildness of grief passed, and they realized but too well that the father who had kissed them and bade them look out for a bright to-morrow, had gone away, and taken all the brightness of the to-morrow with him. At first they could not believe it possible. Father dead! Why, his robust frame and splendid physique had been the remark of guests ever since they could remember! He had been fond of boasting that a physician had not been called for him in twenty years.

Well, the physician arrived too late on this particular night, when he had been called; another call had been louder, and the father went to answer to it. Well for him that he had long before made ready for this journey, and that there was nothing in the summons that would have alarmed him, had he been given time to have realized it.

The poor widow went over, again and again, the details of that awful hour:

"We had a little talk together, just as usual. Much of it was about you; that was natural, too; he talked a great deal about you, children; and on that evening, he said, after you left the room, that you both needed developing in different ways, and sometimes it troubled him to know how it was to be done. I did not understand him, and I asked what he meant. He said some things that I will try to tell you when my head is clearer. He was very earnest about it, and asked me to kneel down with him, and he prayed again for you, dear girls, and for me, a wonderful prayer. It wasn't like any that I ever heard before. Oh, I might have known then that it was to prepare me; but I didn't think of such a thing. I asked him if he felt well, and he said, oh, yes, only more tired than usual; it had been a hard day, and there were business matters that were not so smooth as he could wish. But he told me there was nothing to worry about; only affairs that would require careful handling, such as he meant to give them. Then he dropped to sleep, and I lay awake a little, thinking over what he had said about you two, and wondering if he was right in his conclusions. At last I slept, too, and I knew nothing more until his heavy breathing awakened me.

"I made all possible haste for lights, and sent for the doctor and for you just as soon as I could get an answer to the bell; and Thomas was quick, too, but it seemed an age. The moment I had a glimpse of your father's face, I knew something dreadful was the matter; but I did not think, even then, that he was going to leave me."

At this point the desolate wife would break into a storm of tears, and the daughters would give themselves to soothing words and tender kisses, and put aside as best they could the consuming desire to know what that dear father's last thoughts had been for them.

Well, the days passed. Isn't it curious how time moves along steadily, after the object for which we think time was made has slipped away?

This sudden death, however, had made an unusual break in the usual order of things. Mr. Benedict's name was too closely identified with all the business interests of the city, as well as with its moral and religious interests, not to have his departure from their midst make great differences, and be widely felt.

The few days following his death were days of general and spontaneous public demonstration. On the afternoon of the funeral, great warehouses were closed, because his name was identified with them; stores were closed, because crape waved from the doors of his, the largest in the line. The First National Bank was closed, for he was one of the Directors. The public schools were closed, because he had been prominent among their Board of Directors; and it was so that on every street some token of the power of the great man gone was shown.

As for the church, and the Sabbath-school, and the prayer-room, they were draped in mourning; but that feebly expressed the sense of loss.

"We cannot close our doors to show our sorrow," said Doctor Ellis, his lips tremulous; "we have need to throw them more widely open, and rally with renewed effort, for one of the mighty is fallen."

To the widow and her girls, there was, as the hours passed, a sort of sad pleasure in noting this universal mourning; in listening to the tearful words expressing a sense of personal loss, which came right from the hearts of so many men and women and children. They began to see that they had not half realized his power in the community, as young men in plain, sometimes rough dress, men whose names they had never heard, and whose faces they had never seen, came and stood over the coffin, and dropped great tears as they told in the brief and subdued language of the heart, of some lift, or word, or touch of kindness, that this man had given them, just when they needed it most.

Born of these tender and grateful tributes from all classes, was a drop of bitterness that seemed to spread as Claire turned it over in her troubled heart. It could all be suggested to those familiar with the intricacies of the human heart, by that one little word, Why? It sometimes becomes an awful word, with power to torture the torn heart almost to madness. "Why was father, a man so good, so true, so grand, so sadly needed in this wicked world, snatched from it just in the prime of his power?" She brooded over this in silence and in secret—not wishing to burden her mother's heart by the query, not liking to add a suggestion of bitterness to Dora's sorrowful cup. Only once, when a fresh exhibition of his care for others, and the fruit it bore, was unexpectedly made to them, she was betrayed into exclaiming:

"I cannot understand why it was!"

Whether the mother understood her or not, she did not know. She hoped not; she was sorry she had spoken. But presently the mother roused herself to say gently:

"You girls were on your father's heart in a strange way. That last talk about you I must try to tell you of, when I can. The substance of it I have told you. He thought you both needed developing. Dora dear, he said you needed more self-reliance; that you had too many props, and depended on them. He might have said the same of me; I depended on him more than I knew. He said you needed to be thrust out a little, and learn to stand alone, and brave winds and storms. And Claire, I don't think I fully understood what he wanted for you, only he said that you needed to trust less to your own self, and lean on Christ."

After this word from her father, Claire sat in startled silence for a few minutes, then took it to her room.

Did you ever notice that the storms of life seem almost never to come in detached waves, but follow each other in rapid succession?

When the Benedict family parted for the night, less than a week after the father had been laid in the grave, Dora said listlessly to her sister:

"There is one little alleviation, I think, to a heavy blow—for a while, at least, nothing else seems heavy. Things that troubled me last week seem so utterly foolish to-day. I don't this evening seem to care for anything that could happen to us now; to us three, I mean."

Before noon of the next day she thought of that sentence again with a sort of dull surprise at her own folly.

How do such things occur? I can not tell. Yet how many times in your life have you personally known of them—families who are millionnaires to-day, and beggars to-morrow? It was just that sort of blow which came to the Benedicts. Came, indeed, because of the other one, and followed hard after it. Business men tried to explain matters to the widow. A peculiar complication of circumstances existed, which called for her husband's clear brain and wise handling. Had he lived, all would have been well; there was scarcely a doubt of it. Had he been able to give one week more to business, he would have shaped everything to his mind; but the call came just at the moment when he could least be spared, and financial ruin had followed.

Mrs. Benedict, in her widow's cap, with her plaintive white face, her delicate, trembling hands working nervously in her lap, from which the crimson fancy work was gone, tried to understand the bewilderments which, one after another, were presented to her, and grew less and less able to take in the meaning of the great words, and at last raised herself from her easy chair, looked round pitifully for Claire, and sank back among the cushions—her face, if possible, whiter than before.

The elder daughter came swiftly forward from her obscurity in the back parlor, and stood beside her mother.

"I beg pardon, gentlemen, but mamma does not understand business terms; my father never burdened her with them. Will you let me ask you a few plain questions? Is my father's money all gone?"

The gentlemen looked from one to another, and hesitated. At last the lawyer among them said he feared—that is, it was believed—it seemed to be almost certain that when all the business was settled, there would be a mere pittance left.

The next question caused two red spots to glow on Claire's cheeks, but she held her head erect, and her voice was steady:

"And do they—does anybody think that my father did wrong in any way?"

"Mamma," with a tender, apologetic glance at her, "people say such things sometimes, you know, when they do not understand."

But the gentlemen could be voluble now:

"Oh, no! no, indeed! not a breath of suspicion attached to his name. His intentions were as clear as the sunlight, and the fact was, he had periled his own fortune in a dangerous time, to help others who were in straits, and he had been called to leave it at a dangerous time, and disaster has followed."

One question more:

"Will others be sufferers through this disaster?"

The answer was not so ready. The gentlemen seemed to find it necessary to look again at one another. They, however, finally admitted, to each other, that there was property enough to cover everybody's loss, if that were the wish of the family; this, without any doubt, but there would be almost nothing left.

"Very well," Claire said, "then we can bear it. We thank you, gentlemen, and you may be sure of this one thing—that no person shall lose a penny through our father's loss, if we can help it. Now, may I ask you to leave further particulars until another time? Mamma has borne as much as she can to-day."

And the gentlemen, as they went down the steps of the great brownstone front, said to each other that Benedict had left a splendid girl, with self-reliance enough to manage for herself and take care of the family.

Yet I suppose there had never been a time when Claire Benedict felt more as though all the powers which had hitherto sustained her, were about to desert, and leave her helpless, than she did when she controlled her own dismay, and helped her mother to bed, and sat beside her, and bathed her head, and steadily refused to talk, or to hear her mother talk, about this new calamity, but literally hushed her into quiet and to sleep.

Then, indeed, she took time to cry, as few girls cry; as Claire Benedict had never cried before in her life.

Her self-reliance seemed gone. As the passion of her voiceless grief swayed and fairly frightened her, there stole suddenly into her heart the memory of the last message: "Claire needs to trust less to herself, and lean on Christ."