haste to
visit it again, for I think the very flowers have missed you, and are
less gay than they used to be. You will come soon, my dear, very soon
now--won't you?'

The boy smiled faintly--so very, very faintly--and put his hand upon
his friend's grey head. He moved his lips too, but no voice came from
them; no, not a sound.

In the silence that ensued, the hum of distant voices borne upon the
evening air came floating through the open window. 'What's that?' said
the sick child, opening his eyes.

'The boys at play upon the green.'

He took a handkerchief from his pillow, and tried to wave it above his
head. But the feeble arm dropped powerless down.

'Shall I do it?' said the schoolmaster.

'Please wave it at the window,' was the faint reply. 'Tie it to the
lattice. Some of them may see it there. Perhaps they'll think of me,
and look this way.'

He raised his head, and glanced from the fluttering signal to his idle
bat, that lay with slate and book and other boyish property upon a
table in the room. And then he laid him softly down once more, and
asked if the little girl were there, for he could not see her.

She stepped forward, and pressed the passive hand that lay upon the
coverlet. The two old friends and companions--for such they were,
though they were man and child--held each other in a long embrace, and
then the little scholar turned his face towards the wall, and fell
asleep.

The poor schoolmaster sat in the same place, holding the small cold
hand in his, and chafing it. It was but the hand of a dead child. He
felt that; and yet he chafed it still, and could not lay it down.

CHAPTER 26

Almost broken-hearted, Nell withdrew with the schoolmaster from the
bedside and returned to his cottage. In the midst of her grief and
tears she was yet careful to conceal their real cause from the old man,
for the dead boy had been a grandchild, and left but one aged relative
to mourn his premature decay.

She stole away to bed as quickly as she could, and when she was alone,
gave free vent to the sorrow with which her breast was overcharged.
But the sad scene she had witnessed, was not without its lesson of
content and gratitude; of content with the lot which left her health
and freedom; and gratitude that she was spared to the one relative and
friend she loved, and to live and move in a beautiful world, when so
many young creatures--as young and full of hope as she--were stricken
down a