bear
to stay in the room: all day, all night, she walked, walked, walked; now
in the hall outside his door; now in the rooms below. Every few moments,
she questioned the doctor fiercely: "Is he no better?" "Will he have
another?" "Can't you do something more?" "Do you think there is a
possibility that any other doctor might know something you do not?"
"Shan't I send Caesar over to Springton for Dr. Wilkes; he might think of
something different?" These, and a thousand other such questions, Hetty
put to the harassed and tortured Dr. Eben, over and over, till even his
loving patience was wellnigh outworn. It was strengthened, however,
by his anxiety for her. She did not eat; she did not drink; she looked
haggard and feverish. This child had been to her from the day of his
birth like her own: she loved him with all the pent-up forces of the
great womanhood within her, which thus far had not found the natural
outlet of its affections.

"Doctor," she would cry vehemently, "why should Raby die? God never
means that any children should die. It is all our ignorance and
carelessness; all the result of broken law. I've heard you say a hundred
times, that it is a thwarting of God's plan whenever a child dies: why
don't you cure Raby?"

"That is all true, Hetty," Dr. Eben would reply; "all very true: it is a
thwarting of God's plan whenever any human being dies before he is fully
ripe of old age. But the accumulated weight of generations of broken law
is on our heads. Raby's little life has been all well ordered, so far
as we can see; but, farther back, was something wrong or he would not be
ill today. I have done my best to learn, in my little life, all that is
known of methods of cure; but I have only the records of human ignorance
to learn from, and I must fail again and again."

At last, on the fourth night, Raby slept: slept for hours, quietly,
naturally, and with a gentle dew on his fair forehead. The doctor sat
motionless by his bed and watched him. Sally, exhausted by the long
watch, had fallen asleep on a lounge. The sound of Hetty's restless
steps, in the hall outside, had ceased for some time. The doctor sat
wondering uneasily where she had gone. She had not entered the room for
more than an hour; the house grew stiller and stiller; not a sound was
to be heard except little Raby's heavy breathing, and now and then one
of those fine and mysterious noises which the timbers of old houses have
a habit of making in the nig