ocked up."

"She is dead, she is dead," whined the little boy in his delirium.
"Wicked men killed her when she went into the woods to pluck flowers.
They tied a stone to her feet and sank her in the yellow pond. Oh! oh!
why don't you make haste? She will be drowned directly. Oh! oh! how
bloody her forehead is!"

In the corner of the room was the father on his knees praying. The
mother with tearful eyes kept on spreading the bed-clothes over the sick
child, and the grey-headed grandfather stared stupidly in front of him.

"Hark! Don't you hear little Emma weeping there again? She has not been
properly buried beneath the ground, she wants to come out. Hush! hush!
Don't go, don't go, then perhaps she will stop crying."

Outside the tempest was shaking the trees.

"Oh, oh! There's a knocking at the door! They have come for me. They
want to kill me. They are bringing little Emma. Oh, do not let them in!
Tell them that I am not here! Lock the door!----Father, father, don't
leave me."

It was hideous to see the expression of despair on the round childish
face all covered with sweat. They are wont to paint little children in
the shape of angels. If it should ever occur to a painter to paint a
four-year-old child as a devil, as a fallen accursed spirit, it might be
such a face as his was.

"Oh, God, have mercy upon him, and take him to Thee," sobbed the
grandfather, hiding his face on the table. He could not endure to look
upon the superhuman torments of the child, while the weak, helpless
father cried in the bitterness of his heart, "it is my only son, my
dearest, fairest hope."

The child made as if it would fly or hide itself. It leaped up in its
bed incessantly, and saw hideous shapes around it and raved about them,
and writhed and struggled like one attacked by a serpent.

"Come, my daughter, come, my son!" sobbed old Benjamin, going down upon
his knees. "Kneel beside me, let us pray for him; if our sins are ripe
for punishment, let the punishment fall upon our heads, not upon the
child's."

And the three elders knelt down beside the bed, and held each other by
the hand and wept, and called upon God, and prayed _Him_ to heal the
child.

At that moment three violent blows from a clenched fist were heard upon
the door. The dogs ran howling to the other end of the courtyard, and a
shrill piping voice uttered the words:

"Death! death!"

The old grandfather leaped up from his knees like one beside himself
with