f
the slumbering child. The little watch beat bravely to the march
of time, eager to keep pace with that never-flagging runner; while
the quick and feeble breathing of the girl told how she was fast
losing in the race with the all-omnipotent hours. On a small table
stood two phials, in which were imprisoned dull-coloured liquids,
powerless, despite their supposed potency, to stay the hunger of
the disease so rapidly consuming the patient; and by their side
was a plate of shrivelled fruit, the departing lusciousness of
which had failed to tempt an appetite in her whose mouth was baked
with the fever that fed on its own flame. There, gathered into a
few cubic feet of space, met the great triune mystery of night, of
suffering, of sin--the unfathomable problems of the universe;
there God, the soul, and destiny, together and in silence, played
out their terribly real parts.

As Mrs. Stott looked at her daughter tossing in restless sleep,
the natal hour came back to her, and in memory she again travailed
in birth. She recalled the joy of the advent of that life now so
fast departing, and tried to say, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord
hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' The words died
on her lips. Had it been a blessed thing on the part of God to
give to her a child who brought disgrace on her family name? And
now that her child was restored, with a possibility of redeeming
the past, was it a blessed thing of God to take her? As these
hideous thoughts chased one another through her over-wrought mind,
they seemed to embody themselves in the terrible shadows that
leapt and fought like demons on the wall, mere mockeries of her
helplessness and despair.

Her eye, however, fell on the Bible, and taking it up and opening
it at random, she read, 'Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in
the day of Jerusalem. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be
destroyed, happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little
ones against the stones.' Hurriedly turning over the leaves, her
eyes again fell upon words that went like goads into her heart:
'Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for
light but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day,
because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb.'

'What!' cried she, the old Calvinist life reasserting itself in
her soul--'what! have the curses o' God getten howd o' me?'

* * * * *

'Mother!'

It was the voice of Ama