tell me
what _is_ the matter with you."

"Her eyes do look very wild," said her father, catching the infection of
his wife's fears; "and her temples are hot and throbbing. I hope she is
not threatened with an inflammation of the brain."

"Oh! Mr. Gleason, pray don't suggest such a thought; I cannot bear it,"
cried Mrs. Gleason, with quivering accents. They had lost one lovely
child, the very counterpart of Helen, by that fearful disease, and she
felt as if the gleaming sword of the destroying angel were again waving
over her household.

"You had better send for the doctor," she continued; "just so suddenly
was our lost darling attacked."

Mr. Gleason started up and seized his hat, but Louis sprang to the door
first.

"Let me go, father--I can run the fastest."

And those who met the excited boy running through the street, supposed
it was a life-errand on which he was dispatched.

The doctor came--not the old family physician, whose age and experience
entitled him to the most implicit confidence--but a youthful partner, to
whom childhood was a mysterious and somewhat unapproachable thing.

Of what fine, almost imperceptible links is the chain of deception
formed! Helen had no intention of acting the part of a dissembler when
she formed the desperate resolution of leaving her lonely chamber. She
expected to meet reproaches, perhaps punishment, but anything was
preferable to the horrors of her own imagination. But when she found
herself greeted as a sleep-walker, she had not the moral courage to
close, by an avowal of the truth, the door of escape a mother's gentle
hand had unconsciously opened. She did nut mean to dissemble sickness,
but when her mother pleaded sickness as a reason for not sending her
back to the lone, dark chamber, she yielded to the plea, and really
began to think herself very ill. Her head did throb and ache, and her
eyes burned, as if hot sand were sprinkled over the balls. She was not
afraid of the doctor's medicine, for the last time he had prescribed for
her, he had given her peppermint, dropped on white sugar, which had a
very pleasing and palatable taste. She loved the old doctor, with his
frosty hair and sunny smile, and lay quietly in her mother's arms, quite
resigned to her fate, surprising as it was. But when she beheld a
strange and youthful face bending over her, with a pair of penetrating,
dark eyes, that looked as if they could read the deepest secrets of the
heart, she shrank b