Well! the dead are soon forgotten!" "Dear Margaret! But you're worn out with your long evening waiting for me. I don't wonder. But never you, nor any one else, think because God sees fit to call up new interests perhaps right out of the grave, that therefore the dead are forgotten. Margaret, you yourself can remember our looks, and fancy what we're like." "Yes! but what has that to do with remembering Alice?" "Why, just this. You're not always trying to think on our faces, and ****** a labour of remembering; but often, I'll be bound, when you're sinking off to sleep, or when you're very quiet and still, the faces you knew so well when you could see, come smiling before you with loving looks. Or you remember them, without striving after it, and without thinking it's your duty to keep recalling them. And so it is with them that are hidden from our sight. If they've been worthy to be heartily loved while alive, they'll not be forgotten when dead; it's against nature. And we need no more be upbraiding ourselves for letting in God's rays of light upon our sorrow, and no more be fearful of forgetting them, because their memory is not always haunting and taking up our minds, than you need to trouble yourself about remembering your grandfather's face, or what the stars were like,--you can't forget if you would, what it's such a pleasure to think about. Don't fear my forgetting aunt Alice." "I'm not, Jem; not now, at least; only you seemed so full about Mary." "I've kept it down so long, remember. How glad aunt Alice would have been to know that I might hope to have her for my wife! that's to say if God spares her!" "She would not have known it, even if you could have told her this last fortnight,--ever since you went away she's been thinking always that she was a little child at her mother's apron-string. She must have been a happy little thing; it was such a pleasure to her to think about those early days, when she lay old and gray on her deathbed." "I never knew any one seem more happy all her life long." "Aye! and how gentle and easy her death was! She thought her mother was near her." They fell into calm thought about those last peaceful, happy hours. It struck eleven. Jem started up. "I should have been gone long ago. Give me the bundle. You'll not forget my mother. Good night, Margaret." She let him out and bolted the door behind him. He stood on the steps to adjust some fastening about the bundle. The court, the street, was deeply still. Long ago all had retired to rest on that quiet Sabbath evening.
The stars shone down on the silent deserted streets, and the clear soft moonlight fell in bright masses, leaving the steps on which Jem stood in shadow. A foot-fall was heard along the pavement; slow and heavy was the sound.