.

"Get the camphor, quick!" she said to Ellen. "I dun'no' but you've
killed your father."

Fanny held her husband's head against her shoulder, and rubbed his
hands frantically. The awful strained look had gone from her face.
Ellen came with the camphor, and then went for water. Fanny rubbed
Andrew's forehead with the camphor, and held the bottle to his nose.
"Smell it, Andrew," she said, in a voice of ineffable tenderness and
pity. Ellen returned with a glass of water, and Andrew swallowed a
little obediently. Finally he made out to stagger into the bedroom
with Fanny's and Ellen's assistance. He sat down weakly on the bed,
and Fanny lifted his legs up. Then he sank and closed his eyes as if
he were spent. In fact, he was. At that moment of Ellen's
announcement some vital energy in him suddenly relaxed like
overstrained rubber. His face, sunken in the pillow, was both
ghastly and meek. It was the face of a man who could fight no more.
Ellen knelt down beside him, sobbing.

"Oh, father!" she sobbed, "I think it is for the best. Dear father,
you won't feel bad."

"No," said Andrew, faintly. There was a slight twitching in his
hand, as if he wished to put it on her head, then it lay thin and
inert on the coverlid. He tried to smile, but his face settled into
that look of utter acquiescence of fate.

"I s'pose it's the best you can do," he muttered.

"Have you told Miss Lennox?" gasped Fanny.

"Yes."

"What did she say?"

"She was sorry, but she made no objection," replied Ellen,
evasively.

Fanny came forward abruptly, caught up the camphor-bottle, and began
bathing Andrew's forehead again.

"We won't say any more about it," said she, in a harsh voice. "You'd
better go over to your grandma Brewster's and see if she has got any
whiskey. I think your father needs to take something."

"I don't want anything," said Andrew, feebly.

"Yes, you do, too, you are as white as a sheet. Go over and ask her,
Ellen."

Ellen ran across the yard to her grandmother's, and the old woman
met her at the door. She seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of
trouble.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Father's a little faint, and mother wants me to borrow the
whiskey," said Ellen. She had not at that time the courage to tell
her grandmother what she had done.

Mrs. Zelotes ran into the house, and came out with the bottle.

"I'm comin' over," she announced. "I'm kind of worried about your
father; he 'ain't looked well