In Uncle Joshua's home there were sad, troubled faces and anxious hearts,
as the husband and daughter watched by the wife and mother, whose life on
earth was well-nigh ended. From her mother's family Mrs. Middleton had
inherited the seeds of consumption, which had fastened upon her.
Day by day, they watched her, and when at last she left them it seemed so
much like falling away to sleep that Mr. Middleton, who sat by her, knew
not the exact moment which made him a lonely widower. The next afternoon
sympathizing friends and neighbors assembled to pay the last tribute of
respect to Mrs. Middleton, and many an eye overflowed, and more than one
heart ached as the gray-haired old man bent sadly above the coffin, which
contained the wife of his early love. But he mourned not as one without
hope, for her end had been peace, and when upon her face his tears fell he
felt assured that again beyond the dark river of death he should meet her.
The night succeeding the burial Mr. Middleton's family, overcome with
fatigue and grief, retired early to their rooms, but Fanny could not
sleep, and between ten and eleven she arose and throwing on her dressing
gown nervously walked up and down her sleeping room. It was a little over
a year after her marriage. Through the closed shutters the rays of a
bright September moon were stealing, and attracted by the beauty of the
night, Fanny opened the blinds and the room was filled with a flood of
soft, pale light. From the window where she stood she could distinguish
the little graveyard, with its cypress and willow trees, and its white
monument gleaming through the silvery moonlight, and near that monument
was a dark spot, the grave of her beloved mother. "If all nights were as
lovely as this," thought she, "it would not seem half so dreary to sleep
in the cold dark grave," and then Fanny fell into a fit of musing of the
night that would surely come when she would first be left alone in the
shadowy graveyard.
In the midst of her reverie her attention was attracted by a slight female
figure, which from some quarters had approached unperceived, and now upon
the newly-made grave was bowing itself in apparent weeping. The size and
form of the girl were so much like Luce that Fanny concluded it must be
she, at the same time wondering how, with her superstitious ideas, she
ventured alone near a grave in the night time. In a moment, however, she
saw that Tiger, the watch dog, was with her, and at the same instant the
sound of a suppressed sob fell on her ear. "Poor Luce," said she, "I did
not think she loved my mother so well. I will go to her and mingle my
tears with hers."