e now, if I only had him back. The fever seemed to be just
devouring him: his tongue was as dry as sand, and his head as hot as
fire. 'O mother!' says he, and there was such a look of beseeching in
his eyes as I can never forget, 'may be I shall never want you to do
anything more for me. Cold water! give me some cold water! If I don't
have it, my senses will surely fly out of my head!' 'Yes, Johnny,' says
I,--and I went and brought a tin bucketful, right out of the well, and
set it on the table in his sight; for I thought it would do him good to
see even more than he could drink; and then I brought a cup and dipped
it up full. It was all dripping over, and he had raised himself on one
elbow, and was leaning toward me, when the young doctor came in, and,
stepping between us, took the cup out of my hand. All his strength
seemed to go from poor Johnny at that, and he fell back on his pillow
and never lifted his head any more. Still he kept begging in a feeble
voice for the water. 'Just two or three drops,--just one drop!' he said.
I couldn't bear it, and the doctor said I had better go out of the room,
and so I did,--and the good Lord forgive me; for when I went back, after
half an hour, he was clean crazy. He didn't know me, and he never knowed
me any more."

"It's purty hard, Miss Walker," answered Mr. Bowen, "to accuse the
doctors with the murder of your son. A purty hard charge, that, I call
it! So John's dead! Well, I hope he is better off. Where are you goin'
to bury him?"

And then Mrs. Walker said she didn't charge anybody with the murder of
poor Johnny,--nobody meant to do him any harm, she knew that; but, after
all, she wished she could only have had her own way with him from the
first. And so she rode away,--her little bare-legged grandson, behind
her, aggravating her distress by telling her that, when he got to be a
man, he meant to do nothing all the days of his life but dig wells, and
give water to whoever wanted it.

It is not worth while to dwell at length on the humiliations and
privations to which Jenny was subjected,--the mention of one or two will
indicate the nature of all. In the first place, the white heifer she had
always called hers was sold, and the money tied up in a tow bag. Jenny
would not want a cow for years to come. The piece of land that had
always been known as "Jenny's Corner" was not thus denominated any more,
and she was given to understand that it was only to be hers
_conditionally_