Not fifty feet from him, and bathed in the early sunlight that came sifting through the trees to greet her, stood a child, dressed in a white robe, her sunny hair crowned with flowers, her little hand holding sceptre-wise a long stalk with snow-white bells drooping from its under edge.  Her arms were bare to the shoulder, and her slender feet gleamed white from the bed of moss that almost buried them.  Still as a little statue, or a celestial vision printing itself in one never-to-be-forgotten moment upon the heart of the beholder, she stood looking at him; and Teddy dropped upon his knees, gasping,—­

“It’s out of glory you’ve come to comfort me, darling! and God ever bless you for the same!”

The child looked at him with her starry eyes, and slowly smiled.

“I knew you sometime,” said she.  “Was it in heaven ?”

“No:  it’s better than ever I’ll be, you know, in heaven, little sister.  Are you happy there, mavourneen?” asked Teddy timidly.

“Oh!  I haven’t gone to heaven yet.  I never could find the way,” said the child, with a troubled expression suddenly clouding her sweet face; and then she added musingly,—­

“I thought I’d get there through the river last night; but I tumbled off the log, and only got wet:  and Dora said I was naughty; and so I had to go to bed, and not have some supper, only”—­

“What’s that, then!” shouted Teddy, springing to his feet, and holding out his hands toward her, though not yet daring to approach. " It’s not the spirit of the little sister you are, but a live child?”

“Yes, I’m alive; though, if I’d staid into the river, I wouldn’t have been, Dora says,” replied Sunshine quietly.

“Oh! but the Lord in heaven look down on us this day, and keep me from going downright mad with the joy that’s breaking my heart!  Is it yourself it is, O little sister! is it yourself that’s in it, and I alive to see it?”

He was at her feet now, his white face all bathed with tears, his trembling fingers timidly clasping her robe, his eyes raised imploringly to those serenely bent upon him.

“I knew you once and you was good to me,” said the child musingly; “but I got tired when I danced so much in the street.  I don’t ever dance now, only with Argus.”

“But, little sister, are you just sure, it’s yourself alive?  And don’t you mind I was Teddy, and we used to go walking in the Gardens and on the Commons; and there was the good mammy at home that used to rock you on her lap, and warm the pretty little feet in her hands, and sing to you till you dropped asleep?  Don’t you mind them things, Cherry darling?”

The child looked attentively in his face while he thus spoke, and at the end nodded several times; while a light, like that of earliest dawn, began to glimmer in her eyes.

“Tell me some more,” said she briefly.

“And do you mind the picture-books I used to bring you home, and the story of the Cock Robin you used to like so well to hear, and the skip-jack you played with, and the big doll that mammy made for you, and you called it Susan?”—­