My wife came to meet me with tearful eyes and clad in mourning.

'Oh! Good God!' I groaned, 'where is our dear child?
speak!'-- 'With him on whom you have called, dear husband,' she replied; and we now entered the cottage together weeping silently.

I looked around for the little corpse, and it was then only that I learned how it had all happened." "My wife had been sitting with the child on the edge of the lake, and as she was playing with it, free of all fear and full of happiness, the little one suddenly bent forward, as if attracted by something very beautiful in the water.

My wife saw her laugh, the dear angel, and stretch out her little hands; but in a moment she had sprung out of her mother's arms, and had sunk beneath the watery mirror.

I sought long for our little lost one; but it was all in vain; there was no trace of her to be found." "The same evening we, childless parents, were sitting silently together in the cottage; neither of us had any desire to talk, even had our tears allowed us.