Tempest and Sunshine

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."