to mellow day, day, with its varied changes, sinking into
night. The heaven beyond on which he muses as he gazes, the home for
which he longs, baptizes him with its light beforetime. On the sinless
brow the seal of a perfect peace is set, and the air about the child
grows holy. A hush falls on the room mysterious and solemn, and they
know that white-robed immortals are treading earthly courts, mingling in
earthly company; for he murmurs in his dreams of radiant faces that bend
above him; and the wan face, as they watch it in its slumbers, grows
bright with the look of heaven. A few more hours of earth, a little
longer tarrying of the immortal with the mortal part where it has lived
and loved, suffered and rejoiced; a few more moans of pain, and the blue
eyes open and look upon the day whose silent light will dawn upon us
all. They had not thought the end so near at hand; and, worn out with
grief and watching, the father and his faithful nurses had one by one
retired to rest, leaving Charley, at his earnest solicitation, to sit
beside the bed and watch his brother's fitful slumbers. Since that fatal
day, a dread and horror of his mother had seized upon the child. Though
surrounded by those he loved, her near approach would cause strong
nervous chills, and her kiss or touch would throw him into frightful
spasms, from which they could with difficulty recover him; hence, by the
doctor's orders, she was forbidden the room, and it was only when utter
exhaustion had steeped his refined spiritual sense into perfect oblivion
of surrounding objects, that she was permitted to enter there and gaze
for a little on the wan features of her sleeping child. That day,
knowing his time on earth was short, and possessed by a restless and
uncontrollable desire to be near him, even though she could not look
upon his face, into the room of her dying boy she had stolen like a
culprit, and noiselessly shrank into the farthest corner of the room,
screened from his observation by the heavy window-curtain and the high
head-board of the bed. They had discovered her there after a time, but
she, in terms which would have moved the coldest heart to pity, implored
them with tears to allow her to remain; and they, seeing that the demon
had departed from her for a season, and compassionating the forlorn
being, had gone away and left her there. She sits motionless in the
silent room, her despairing eyes fixed on the serene heaven to which her
darling will s