g them. But
he'll be there to-morrow.'

'Has he been ill?' asked the child, with a child's quick sympathy.

'Not very. They said he was wandering in his head yesterday, dear boy,
and so they said the day before. But that's a part of that kind of
disorder; it's not a bad sign--not at all a bad sign.' The child was
silent. He walked to the door, and looked wistfully out. The shadows
of night were gathering, and all was still.

'If he could lean upon anybody's arm, he would come to me, I know,' he
said, returning into the room. 'He always came into the garden to say
good night. But perhaps his illness has only just taken a favourable
turn, and it's too late for him to come out, for it's very damp and
there's a heavy dew. It's much better he shouldn't come to-night.'

The schoolmaster lighted a candle, fastened the window-shutter, and
closed the door. But after he had done this, and sat silent a little
time, he took down his hat, and said he would go and satisfy himself,
if Nell would sit up till he returned. The child readily complied, and
he went out.

She sat there half-an-hour or more, feeling the place very strange and
lonely, for she had prevailed upon the old man to go to bed, and there
was nothing to be heard but the ticking of an old clock, and the
whistling of the wind among the trees. When he returned, he took his
seat in the chimney corner, but remained silent for a long time. At
length he turned to her, and speaking very gently, hoped she would say
a prayer that night for a sick child.

'My favourite scholar!' said the poor schoolmaster, smoking a pipe he
had forgotten to light, and looking mournfully round upon the walls.
'It is a little hand to have done all that, and waste away with
sickness. It is a very, very little hand!'

CHAPTER 25

After a sound night's rest in a chamber in the thatched roof, in which
it seemed the sexton had for some years been a lodger, but which he had
lately deserted for a wife and a cottage of his own, the child rose
early in the morning and descended to the room where she had supped
last night. As the schoolmaster had already left his bed and gone out,
she bestirred herself to make it neat and comfortable, and had just
finished its arrangement when the kind host returned.

He thanked her many times, and said that the old dame who usually did
such offices for him had gone to nurse the little scholar whom he had
told her of. The child asked how he wa