little dreamed how soon her sunny home was to become a sad, dark place for her.

Peter used to go forth in the morning, whistling as gayly as any of the birds; and Daisy following him, proud enough that she could carry his little dinner basket for the short way she went.

She did not know that what was such a heavy load to her was only a feather for the strong man to lift, and so delighted in thinking she had grown old enough to help her dear father.

Still Peter had to watch his dinner closely; for Daisy would espy some beautiful flower or vine looking at her from away off in the shade; and down the basket would go, and the little girl was off to take a nearer look, and see if she could not break off a branch to carry home to her mother.

Sometimes Peter walked so fast, or Daisy staid so long, that they lost each other; and then the father made a call that could be heard for miles, which frightened all the birds home to their nests, and must have startled the old dame herself, wherever she might be lurking in the wood.

But the call was music to Daisy; and before many minutes, she would come bounding into her father's arms, almost hidden in the waving white blossoms with which she had loaded herself.

And all this while, unless Peter himself took care of it, what would become of his dinner!

When Susan went to meet her husband at evening, now, Daisy was sure to be with her—one moment holding her hand, the next skipping away alone, or kneeling to gather bright pebbles and sheets of green moss, to make banks and paths in her garden. She fluttered about in the sunshine like the butterflies she loved, and was as harmless and gentle.

But, alas! one night, no Peter came to meet them; and though Daisy kept thinking she heard his step or his voice, it could only be the fall of some dead limb or the hooting of an owl.

The night grew darker, and it lightened so sharply that Daisy clung to her mother's skirts, and begged her to hide somewhere under a rock until the storm should be past, as the little girl felt almost sure her father had done.

But Susan groped her way on, with the wind blowing the branches into their faces, and the dead boughs snapping and falling about them, and the snakes, that they had never seen before, gliding across the path, hissing, and running their forked tongues out with fear.

And at length they found poor Peter, dead, on the ground. The tree which he had been cutting down had fallen suddenly, and crushed his head so under its great trunk that they only knew him by his clothes.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SWEETEST FLOWER.

Small as Daisy was, she saw that her father could never speak to her again; she remembered how kind he had always been; how many good times they had had together; how, that very morning, he had waited, on his way to work, and climbed a tall tree, only to tell her whether the eggs were hatched in the blue-jay's nest.

She thought, too, how he had let her go farther than usual, and then walked back with her part way, to be sure she was in the right path, and how gently he had kissed her at parting, and told her to be a good girl, and help her mother.

Ah, she would take care to do that now, and never forget the last words which her dear father spoke to her.

When our friends are taken away, we remember every little kind word, or look, or smile they ever gave us—things we hardly noticed while they were alive; and Daisy could remember only kindness, only smiles and pleasant words. She thought no one could ever have had so good a father as Peter was to her, and that no little girl could be so lonely and wretched as she was now.

Who was there left to call her up in the morning before the birds, and to make her garden tools, and swing her in the boughs, and listen to her stories at night about the rabbits and flowers? It seemed as if her heart would break.

But Daisy had one pleasant thought to comfort her—it seemed like a sweet flower that her father had dropped down from his new home in paradise, and which she would always wear in her bosom; and perhaps he would know her by it when, after a great many years, she should go to live with him there.

This dear thought was, that when Peter lived, she had done every thing in her power to please him and make him forget his weariness, and that he had known of this thoughtfulness, and loved her for it, and had always felt younger and happier when she was by his side.

If your brothers and sisters or parents die, whether by accident or sickness, are you sure that they would leave you such a comforter as Daisy had? Think about it; for when you stand by their coffins, and it is too late to change the past, and the cold lips have spoken their last word, this little flower will be worth more to you—though no one may see it except yourself—than all the treasure in the world.

But if you have been cold and cruel, there will come into your heart, instead, when you think of them, a dismal shadow, which all the light of the blessed sun cannot drive away.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WOODMAN'S FUNERAL.

Daisy did not see the lightning, nor hear the snakes, nor feel the drops of rain that began to patter down; she only felt the cold hand that would never lead her through the wood again; for when she lifted it, it fell back on the ground, dead—dead!

She asked her mother if they were not going home; but Susan said her home was with Peter; and if he staid out in the dark wood, she must stay there, too. She was frightened, and wild with sorrow, and did not know what she was saying, and began, at last, to blame the old woman, who had brought her there, she said, to be so happy for a little while, and always afterwards lonely and wretched—the old hag!

"What old hag!" said a voice close to Susan's ear, that brought her senses back quickly. "Is this all your gratitude, Susan? And are you going to kill your child, out here, with the cold and damp, because your husband's gone? Come! we must bury him; and then away to your home, and don't sit here, abusing your best friend."

Daisy, you know, had never seen the woman, and she had never looked so dreadfully as now; she was pale and starved, and her great eyes glittered like the eyes of the snakes, and her voice was sharp and shrill enough to have frightened one on a pleasanter night than that.

With Peter's axe the fairy sharpened two stout sticks; one of these she made Susan take, and there, by the light of the quick flashes of lightning, and a little lantern that the woman wore like a brooch on her bosom, Daisy watched them dig her father's grave.

The fallen tree was one of the largest in the wood, and the two women could not lift it; so they dug the earth away at the side and underneath the trunk; and when the place was deep enough, poor Peter's body dropped into its grave. While her mother and the fairy were filling it over with earth, Daisy went for the moss which she had gathered to show her father, and, by the light of the fairy's lamp, picked the sweetest flowers, and fragrant grasses, and broad leaves that glistened with the rain, and scattered them on the spot.

Then, with one of Susan's and one of Daisy's hands in hers, the old dame hurried them out of the wood. They stumbled often over the broken boughs, and stepped, before they knew it, on the snakes, that only hissed and slid away