CHAPTER XVIII.

SUNRISE.

BUT the poor mother was too bewildered and heart-broken to take any comfort yet.

Her only child was being snatched from her under circumstances so pitiful that to her mind no ray of hope or consolation could enter.

She would have given everything she possessed at that moment to pacify her dying child, and yet the promise he wanted of her was one she thought she could not give.

Johnnie still held her hand, and all she could do was to bend down and kiss his little one softly, stilling her passionate longing to clasp him in her arms by an effort which seemed to her to be almost killing her.

As her eyes were fixed on his wan little face, she saw his lips move, and at the same moment the nurse came quickly to his side with her gentle, untiring, "What is it, dear?"

"You'll be glad by and by—" said Johnnie, tenderly, to his mother.

"Glad? Oh, Johnnie, you do not know—"

"Glad that I am gone to Jesus. Mother—if you will not promise me—still you'll try?"

"I'll do what I can, Johnnie," she answered at last.

He glanced towards the nurse as if struggling to remember something.

She sat down on the edge of his bed and put her arm under his head.

"Say it again," he whispered.

So she said, slowly and distinctly—

"'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.'"

"Yes; that's it!" he answered, with a sigh of content.

Just then a ray of sunshine broke from a dark cloud in which the sun had been hidden, and crept along Johnnie's bed, covering his thin little hands, and shining right up into his wide-open eyes.

"What's that?" he asked with a sudden smile, the only one his mother had seen on his face, an eager, tender smile which astonished her.

"It's the blessed sunrise," said the nurse soothingly.

But his eyes were still gazing upward, the smile growing and growing till it became radiant.

"It's—it's 'Jesus!'" he murmured.

The eyes continued to look while the gasping breath grew fainter and fainter. And then, with one more weary, yet rested sigh, he went away to the glory which his Saviour has prepared for those who love Him.

Twelve terrible, hopeless hours of heart-rending grief must elapse before the woman could venture to retrace her steps to her home, or tell her husband of the blow which had fallen upon them.

The kind nurse did everything in her power to try to comfort the desolate mother.

But to all her gentle words, the woman only answered, "You do not know—no one can ever know—it is no use to talk to me. Oh, my Johnnie! My Johnnie!"

Once during that long day which she spent in the housekeeper's room, she had asked permission to visit the place where lay all that remained of her boy. But thither no earthly eye followed her, and her grief, with its secret sting, was seen only by Him who can unlock the chambers of every heart, and knows what each one needs to bring it to feel its need of Himself.

At length the weary day was over, and darkness began to gather. Directly the woman saw this, she took her bonnet and shawl, and with a few words of broken thanks to the nurse, she left the house and turned towards home.

An hour after dark, the woman climbed up those stairs at home, and was let in to that top room, which looked so like, and so unlike too, the room she had left less than twenty-four hours ago.

As she threw aside her veil, her husband saw all at a glance.

"Yes—" she said, and then sank down in the chair and laid her head on her arms on the table.

The man broke into bitter reproaches, walking up and down the room pouring forth thick words of anguish, in which he laid the blame on his wife, as if she were not heart-broken enough already.

Presently the woman raised her head, and throwing off her shawl and bonnet, she went to the corner and lifted from the bed a little child, wrapping it in a blanket and sitting down by the fire with it on her lap.

"How's he been?" she asked briefly.

The man, who had been watching her movements and gradually ceasing to rage, now mumbled something about "very poorly," and without any more words went down-stairs, and shut himself into the room they occupied there.

The woman proceeded to feed and wash the little invalid in unbroken silence. But as she did so, the first tears she had shed since Johnnie died fell down her cheeks, and dropped on to the soft golden curls of the little boy.

"Oh, Johnnie, Johnnie!" she whispered at last. "How could I have promised you what I did? I shall never, never be able to keep it!"

And still, as she tended the little one, her tears dropped down on his golden hair as she remembered Johnnie's beseeching words—

"'He's' got a mother too!"

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