nt over him. "I've come to take care of
you, Barney," said she. His eyes, half dazed in his burning face,
looked up at her with scarcely any surprise.

[Illustration: "'I've come to take care of you'"]

Charlotte laid back some of the bedclothes whose weight was a
torture, and straightened the others. She worked about the house
noiselessly and swiftly. She was skilful in the care of the sick; she
had had considerable experience. Soon everything was clean and in
order; there was a pleasant smell of steeping herbs through the
house. Charlotte had set an old remedy of her mother's steeping over
the fire--a harmless old-wives' decoction, with which to supplement
the doctor's remedies, and give new courage to the patient's mind.

Barney came to think that this remedy which Charlotte prepared was of
more efficacy than any which the doctor mixed in his gallipots. That
is, when he could think at all, and his mind and soul was able to
reassert itself over his body. He had a hard illness, and after he
was out of bed he could only sit bent miserably over in a
quilt-covered rocking-chair beside the fire. He could not straighten
himself up without agonizing pain. People thought that he never
would, and he thought so himself. His grandfather, his mother's
father, had been in a similar condition for years before his death.
People called that to mind, and so did Barney. "He's goin' to be the
way his grandfather Emmons was," the men said in the store. Barney
could dimly remember that old figure bent over almost on all-fours
like a dog; its wretched, grizzled face turned towards the earth with
a brooding sternness of contemplation. He wondered miserably where
his grandfather's old cane was, when he should be strong enough in
his pain-locked muscles to leave his rocking-chair and crawl about in
the spring sunshine. It used to be in the garret of the old house. He
thought that he would ask Rebecca or William to look for it some day.
He hesitated to speak about it. He half dreaded to think that the
time was coming when he would be strong enough to move about, for
then he was afraid Charlotte would leave him and go home. He had been
afraid that she would when he left his bed. He had a childishly
guilty feeling that he had perhaps stayed there a little longer than
was necessary on that account. One Sunday the doctor had said quite
decisively to Charlotte, "It won't hurt him any to be got up a little
while to-morrow. It will be better for h