Page:A New England Tale.djvu/31

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A NEW-ENGLAND TALE.

head to the east, and exclaim, "are ye heathens, that ye serve the dead thus? Know ye not the 'Lord Cometh in the east.'" She always lingered behind after the crowd had dispersed, and busily moved and removed the sods; and many a time has she fallen asleep, with her head resting on the new-made grave, for, she said, there was no sleep so quiet as 'where the wicked did not trouble.'

The quick eye of crazy Bet detected, through their thin guise, the pride and hypocrisy and selfishness of the sisters. She interrupted Mrs. Wilson as she was concluding her most inappropriate quotation, 'Throw it to the dogs;' said she, 'It is more like taking the prey from the wolf.' She then rose, singing in an under voice,

"Oh! be the law of love fulfilled
In every act and thought,
Each angry passion for removed.
Each selfish view forgot."

She approached the bed, and withdrawing the curtain, exposed the little sufferer to view. She had lain the open Bible on the pillow, where she had often rested beside her mother, and laying her cheek on it had fallen asleep. It was open at the 5th chapter of John, which she had so often read to her mother, that she had turned instinctively to it. The page was blistered with her tears.

Careless of the future, which to her seemed to admit no light, her exhausted nature had found relief in sleep, at the very moment her aunts were so unfeelingly deciding her fate. Her pale check