proper to give precedence to the rest. The lady took his hand as he
came by, the same hand that had received her husband's tender care;
but there was something in his pallid, grief-marked face, in the brown
eyes filled with tears, in the sensitive trembling of the delicate
lips, as she looked down on him, that brought swift tenderness for him
to her heart. She bent over and lifted up his face to hers, and kissed
his lips, and then, unable longer to restrain her emotion, she turned
and hastened up the stairway, and was lost to sight.

For many minutes Ralph stood still, in gratified amazement. It was
the first time in all his life, so far as memory served him, that any
one had kissed him. And that this grief-stricken lady should be the
first--it was very strange, but very beautiful, indeed. He felt that
by that kiss he had been lifted to a higher level, to a clearer, purer
atmosphere, to a station where better things than he had ever done
before would be expected of him now; he felt, indeed, as though it
were the first long reach ahead to attain to such a manhood as was
Robert Burnham's. The repetition of this name in his mind brought him
to himself, and he turned into the parlor just as the last one of the
other boys was passing out. He hurried across the room to look upon
the face of his friend and employer. It was not the unpleasant sight
that he had feared it might be. The dead man's features were relaxed
and calm. A smile seemed to be playing about the lips. The face had
all its wonted color and fulness, and one might well have thought,
looking on the closed eye-lids, that he lay asleep.

Standing thus in the presence of death, the boy had no fear. His only
feeling was one of tenderness and of deep sorrow. The man had been so
kind to him in life, so very kind. It seemed almost as though the lips
might part and speak to him. But he was dead; this was his face, this