ay, I shortly afterward bade her
'good-night,' and left the house.

CHAPTER III.

It was noon on the following day when I again visited the house in
Anthony street. As I opened the door of the sick woman's room, I was
startled by her altered appearance. Her eye had a strange, wild light,
and her face already wore the pallid hue of death. She was bolstered up
in bed, and the little boy was standing by her side, weeping, his arms
about her neck. I took her hand in mine, and in a voice which plainly
spoke my fears, said:

'You are worse!'

In broken gasps, and in a low, a very low tone, her lips scarcely
moving, she answered:

'No! I am--better--much--better. I knew you--were coming. She told me
so.'

'_Who_ told you so?' I asked, very kindly, for I saw that her mind was
wandering.

'My mother--she has been with me--all the day--and I have been so--so
happy, so--_very_ happy! I am going now--going with her--I've only
waited--for you!'

'Say no more now, madam, say no more; you are too weak to talk.'

'But I _must_ talk. I am--dying, and I must tell--you all before--I go!'

'I would gladly hear you, but you have not strength for it now. Let me
get something to revive you.'

She nodded assent, and looking at her son, said:

'Take Franky.'

The little boy kissed her, and followed me from the room. When we had
reached the upper-landing, I summoned the woman of the house, and said
to him:

'Now, Franky, I want you to stay a little while with this good lady;
your mother would talk with me.'

'But mother says she's dying, sir,' cried the little fellow, clinging
closely to me; 'I don't want her to die, sir. Oh! I want to be with her,
sir!'

'You shall be, very soon, my boy; your _mother_ wants you to stay with
this lady now.'

He released his hold on my coat, and sobbing violently, went with the
red-faced woman. I hurried back from the apothecary's, and seating
myself on the one rickety chair by her bedside, gave the sick woman the
restorative. She soon revived, and then, in broken sentences, and in a
low, weak voice, pausing every now and then to rest or to weep, she told
me her story. Weaving into it some details which I gathered from others
after her death, I give it to the reader as she outlined it to me.

She was the only daughter of a well-to-do farmer in the town of B----,
New-Hampshire. Her mother died when she was a child, and left her to the
care of a paternal aunt, who became her father's hou