r and Nan roamed about in the sun, following the baby, as his nurse
carried him in her arms. He had been christened Abraham Gunn Little;
poor James Little having persistently refused to let his own name be
given to the child, and Hetty having been cordially willing to give her
father's. To speak to a baby as Abraham was manifestly impossible, and
the little fellow was called simply "Baby" month after month, until, one
day, one of Norah's toddlers, who could not speak plain, hit upon a
nickname so fortunate that it was at once adopted by everybody. "Raby,"
little Mike called him, by some original process of compounding
"Abraham" and "Baby;" and "Raby" he was from that day out. He was a
beautiful child: his mother's blue eyes, his father's dark hair, and a
skin like a ripe peach, but not over fair,--made a combination of color
which was rarely lovely. He was a joyous child, as joyous as if no
shadow had ever rested on his mother's heart. Sally watched him day by
day with delight; but the delight was never wholly free from pain: the
wound she had received, the wound she had inflicted on herself, could
never wholly heal. A deep, moral hurt must for ever leave its trace, as
surely as a deep wound in a man's flesh must leave its scar. It is of no
use for us to think to evade this law; neither is it a law wholly of
retribution. The scar on the flesh is token of nature's process of
healing: so is the scar of a perpetual sorrow, which is left on a soul
which has sinned and repented. Sally and Jim were leading healthful and
good lives now; and each day brought them joys and satisfactions: but
their souls were scarred; the fulness of joy which might have been
theirs they could never taste. And the loss fell where it could never be
overlooked for a moment,--on their joy in their child. In the very
holiest of holies, in the temple of the mother's heart, stood for ever a
veiled shape, making ceaseless sin-offering for the past.

As the winter set in, an anxiety fell on the family which had passed so
sunny a summer. With the first sharp cold winds, little Raby developed a
tendency to croup. Neither Sally nor Hetty had ever seen a case of this
terrible and alarming disease; and, in Raby's first attack of it, they
had both thought the child dying. Now was Doctor Eben brought again into
close and intimate relations with Hetty. During the months of the
summer, he had, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of his frequent
visits to her hous