told you that little Lib was a delicate child, and that she grew more and more fragile and weak as the summer went on. In the hot, dry days of August she drooped like a thirsty flower, and her strength failed very fast. Her voice, though still sweet and clear, lost its shrillness, and one had to draw very close to the little speaker that he might not lose a word of the stories she told. Aunt Jane York often came out to us now, anxious and fussy, talking fretfully of and to little Lib, feeling the small hands and feet to see if they were cold, and drawing the shawl closer around the wasted form. I know she loved the little girl, and perhaps she wished now that she had shown that love more tenderly. She talked freely, in the very presence of the child, of her rapid decline and the probability that she would not "last long." Lib said nothing concerning her own condition, and showed no sign of having heard her aunt's comments. But one day, when Miss York, after speaking very freely and plainly of the child's approaching end, had gone indoors, Lib announced, in a low, sweet voice, a new story.

The story of the boy that was scaret o' dyin' was the last story that little Lib ever told us. We saw her sometimes after that, but she was not strong enough to talk much. She sat no longer now in the low chair under the maples, but lay on a chintz-covered couch in the sitting-room, by the west windows. The once shrilly-sweet voice with its clear bird tones was but a whisper now, as she told us over and again, while she lay there, that she would tell us a new story "to-morrow." It was always "to-morrow" till the end came. And the story was to be, so the whisper went on, "the beautif'lest story,—oh, you never did!" And its name was to be,—what a faint and feeble reproduction of the old triumphant announcement of a new title!—"The Posy Gardin' that the King Kep'."

She never told us that story. Before the autumn leaves had fallen, while the maples in front of the farmhouse were still red and glorious in their dying beauty, we laid our little friend to rest. Perhaps she will tell us the tale some day. I am sure there will be "a Angel" in it,—sure, too, that the story will have a new and tender meaning if we hear it there, that story of the King and of the posy gardin' he kep'.