good many
questions, and then made his examination.

Jim watched him keenly, and somehow his heart sank down and down and
down.

"Is he very bad?" he asked at last, huskily.

The doctor turned away from the little bed and looked at the fine,
tall young fellow before him.

"I understand he isn't your child?"

Jim shook his head. "He's my dead sister's child, and his father's
dead too. He belongs to me now, and I'd do anything for him. He's not
very bad, is he, doctor?"

"He's going to join them," said the doctor abruptly. "There's not the
slightest hope--at least, I think not--but I'll do my best. He's got
cold in every bit of him."

Jim groaned. Oh! to have that last fateful Monday back again--to live
over again these last weeks of self-indulgence. And now it was too
late--too late!

But the doctor was pouring out medicines and directions, and this was
no time for vain regrets.

"You'll sit up with him," he said, and he looked directly at Jim;
"and," he glanced at Jane this time, "I'll send the nurse. She'll set
you going and look in the first thing in the morning."

But there was no need. When, having seen the gravity of the case, the
nurse knocked gently at Jim's door, before six o'clock in the morning,
the little life had fled, and Jim was kneeling broken-hearted by the
little bed, Harry's sweet face still pillowed on his shoulder. A soft
smile lingered on the little lips and he seemed asleep, but Jim and
the nurse knew better.

He was dead.

As Tom had said, Jesus had got the beautiful home ready, and He had
sent for Harry.

* * * * *

It was on this same morning that, by the first post, Denys received a
letter from Mixham.

She tore it open eagerly, for any letter nowadays might bring news of
Maud, but she laid it down again listlessly.

"Oh dear!" she said, "that is from old Mrs. Richardson. Her daughter
has got married and gone away, and she is so lonely, and she sits
alone and cries all day, and she says that I have always cheered her
up in all her sorrows and she wants me to go over to-day; and it is so
bad for her eyes to cry because of her dressmaking, and when she has
seen me she won't cry any more; but--oh dear! oh dear!" and Denys
herself burst out crying, for her nerves had been very much shaken, "I
can't go and comfort anybody. It would be no use my going for that!"

Yet after breakfast she sought out Mrs. Brougham.

"Mother," she said, "I think I