Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/302



I have seen angels in the gloomy prison, In crowded halls, by the lone widow's hearth; And when they passed the fallen have uprisen, The giddy paused, the mourner's hope had birth.

And by his side there moved a form of beauty, Strewing sweet flowers along his path of life, And looking up with meek and love-lent duty: I call her angel, but he called her wife.

On reaching Liverpool, his first visit was to his sister's rave. He would never have found it, were it not for a curiously shaped stone that he had embedded in the sod ere he went away. As it was, he was a long time before he could discover it among the hundreds of grass-grown mounds lying all around it. It seemed to him that he had had a long life since he lay there that summer night, and resolved that he would leave Liverpool behind him, and go out into the great world that lay beyond to seek his fortune "Ah, well!" he mused. "I have made no fortune, but I have lived a life of peace, and God has taken care of me, and now I have come back again no longer a child, though scarcely a man, and I believe God will take care of me here.'* Kneeling by the little grave, he offered up a silent prayer for help and protection.