o come ten days ago, and they need you at the office, and
I need you more than anybody."
"I need you more than anybody!" When the little clinging needs of three
weeks grew into the great want of a lifetime,--O, how could I tell _her_
what was coming?
I did not tell her. When I had hurried home, when she came bounding
through the hall to meet me, when she held up her face, half laughing,
half crying, and flushing and paling, to mine,--the poor little face
that by and by would never watch and glow at my coming,--I could not
tell her.
When the children were in bed and we were alone after tea, she climbed
gravely up into my lap from the little cricket on which she had been
sitting, and put her hands upon my shoulders.
"You're sober, Fred, and pale. Something ails you, you know, and you are
going to tell me all about it."
Her pretty, mischievous face swam suddenly before my eyes. I kissed it,
put her gently down as I would a child, and went away alone till I felt
more like myself.
The winter set in gloomily enough. It may have been the snow-storms, of
which we had an average of one every other day, or it may have been the
storm in my own heart which I was weathering alone.
Whether to believe those people, or whether to laugh at their
predictions; whether to tell my wife, or whether to continue
silent,--these questions tormented me through many wakeful nights and
dreary days. My fears were in nowise allayed by a letter which' I
received one day in January from Gertrude Fellows.
"Why don't you read it aloud? What's the news?" asked Alison. But at one
glance over the opening page I folded the sheet, and did not read it
till I could lock myself into the library alone. The letter ran:--
"I have been much disturbed lately on your behalf. My mother and your
brother Joseph appear to me nearly every day, and charge me with some
message to you which I cannot distinctly grasp. It seems to be clear,
however, as far as this: that some calamity is to befall you in the
spring,--in May, I should say. It seems to me to be of the nature of
death. I do not learn that you can avoid it, but that they desire you to
be prepared for it."
After receiving this last warning, certain uncomfortable words filed
through my brain for days together:--
"Set thine house in order, for thou shalt surely die."
"Never knew you read your Bible so much in all your life," said Alison,
with a pretty pout. "You'll grow so good that I can't b
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