out the
carpet. Alarmed now, he opened the door and was going out, when his
mother called to him.

"What is the matter, Willie? Where are you going? What have you
lost?"

"Nothing much, mother; I am only going out a minute," and he closed
the door, and began an almost hopeless search by the moonlight for his
lost treasure. Up and down the walk he searched without finding it. He
opened the gate, and peeping and peering about, wandered up the road,
until his little feet and limbs got wet in the soft snow, and his
hands became benumbed; when, feeling convinced that it was lost, he
sat down and burst into a passionate fit of weeping. Let no one feel
surprise or contempt at this. In this little affair of the thimble
there had been disinterested love, self-sacrifice, anticipated joy,
disappointment and despair, though all expended on a cheap thimble.
Yet, Willie was but seven years old, and "thought as a child, felt as
a child, understood as a child." I am a grown-up child now, and have
had many troubles, but the most acute sorrow I ever felt was the death
of my pet pigeon, when I was seven years old.

It was long before the storm in his little bosom subsided, but when
at last it did, he turned to go home; he would not go before, lest he
might grieve his mother with the sight of his tears. At last, weary
and half-frozen, he opened the cottage gate and met his mother coming
to look for him, and she, who always spoke most gently to him, and for
whose dear sake she was suffering, now by a sad chance, and out of her
fright and vexation, sharply rebuked him and hurried him off to bed.
"If dear mamma had known, she would not have scolded me so, though,"
was his last thought as he sank into a feverish sleep. The next
morning when Mrs. Dulan arose, the heavy breathing, and bright flush
upon the cheek of her boy, caught her attention, and roused her fears
for his health. As she gazed, a sharp expression of pain contracted
his features and he awoke. Feebly stretching out his arms to embrace
her, he said:

"Oh, mamma, Willie is so sick, and his breast hurts so bad."

The child had caught the pleurisy.

It was late at night before medical assistance could be procured from
a distant village. In the meantime the child's illness had fearfully
progressed; and when at last the physician arrived, and examined him,
he could give no hopes of his recovery. Language cannot depict the
anguish of the mother as she bent over the couch of her