suffering boy,
and, if a grain could have increased the burden of her grief, it would
have been felt in the memory of the few words of harsh rebuke when he
had returned half-frozen and heavy-hearted from his fruitless search
after the thimble, for the kind Elizabeth had arrived and explained
the incident of the night.

* * * * *

It was midnight of the ninth day. Willie had lain in a stupor for a
whole day and night previous. His mother stood by his bed; she neither
spoke nor wept, but her face wore the expression of acute suffering.
Her eyes were strained with an earnest, anxious, agonized gaze upon
the deathly countenance of the boy. Old Dr. Dulan entered the room at
this moment, and looking down at the child, and taking his thin, cold
hand in his own, felt his pulse, and turning to the wretched mother,
who had fixed her anxious gaze imploringly upon him, he said:

"Hannah, my dear sister---- But, oh, God! I cannot deceive you," and
abruptly left the room.

"Elizabeth," said he to his daughter, who was sitting by the parlor
fire, "go into the next room and remain with your aunt, and if
anything occurs summon me at once; and, John, saddle my horse quickly,
and ride over to Mrs. Caply and tell her to come over here."

Mrs. Caply was the layer-out of the dead for the neighborhood.

How tediously wore that dreary night away in the sickroom, where the
insensible child was watched by his mother and her friend! The
flickering taper, which both forgot to snuff, would fitfully flare up
and reveal the watchers, the bed, and the prostrate form of the pale,
stiff, motionless boy, with his eyes flared back with a fixed and
horrid stare. In the parlor, a party equally silent and gloomy kept
their vigil. Dr. Dulan, his son and the old woman, whose fearful
errand made her very presence a horror, formed the group. The old
woman at last, weary at holding her tongue so long, broke silence by
saying: "I always thought that child would never be raised, sir--he
was so smart and clever, and so dutiful to his ma. He was too good for
this world, sir. How long has he been sick, sir?"

"Little more than a week; but I beg you will be silent, lest you
disturb them in the next room."

"Yes, sir, certainly. Sick people ought to be kept quiet, though
perhaps that don't much matter when they are dying. Well, poor little
fellow; he was a pretty child, and will look lovely in his shroud and
cap, and----"

"Hus