ing to fear from the tongue
hitherto so busy. Juno, Bell and Father Cameron all came to see her,
dropping tears upon the face looking so old and worn with suffering, but
yet so sweet and pure, and treading softly as they left the room and
went out into the sunshine where Katy might never go again. In the
kitchen there was mourning, too; Phillips weeping for her mistress,
while Esther, with her apron over her head, sobbed passionately, wishing
she, too, might die if Katy did. Mrs. Cameron also was very sorry, very
sad, but managed to find some consolation in mentally arranging a grand
funeral, which would do honor to her son, and wondering if "those
Barlows in Silverton would think they must attend." And while she thus
arranged, the mother who had given birth to Katy wrestled in earnest
prayer that God would spare her child, or at least grant some space in
which she might be told of the world to which she was hastening. What
Wilford suffered none could guess. His face was very white and his
expression almost stern as he sat watching the young wife who had been
his for little more than two brief years, and who but for his sin might
not have been lying there unconscious of the love and grief around her.
Like some marble statue Morris seemed as with lip compressed and brows
firmly knit together he, too, sat watching Katy, feeling for the pulse
and bending his ear to catch the faintest breath which came from her
parted lips, while in his heart there was an earnest prayer for the
safety of the soul hovering so evenly between this world and the next.
He did not ask that she might live, for if all were well hereafter he
knew it was far better for her to die in her young womanhood than to
live till the heart now so sad and bleeding had grown calloused with
sorrow. And yet it was terrible to think of Katy dead; to know that
never again would her little feet dance on the grass, or her bird-like
voice break the silence of his home; terrible to think of that face and
form laid away beneath the turf of Greenwood, where those who loved her
best could seldom go to weep.

And as they sat thus the night shadows stole into the room and the hours
crept on till from a city tower a clock struck ten, and Morris,
motioning Helen to his side, bade her go with her mother to rest. "We do
not need you here," he said, "your presence can do no good. Should a
change occur you shall be told at once."

Thus importuned Helen and her mother withdrew and