for spirit and flesh were alike subdued; my
mind was as worn and as much weakened as
my body.

"Nobody saw me there but my aunt, my
children, their nurse, Dr. Ryton, who saw
me often there, and stayed sometimes
unwillingly for days together, as much to
watch them as to attend me, and Mr.
Morton, the pastor of the district, an aged,
most loving-spirited man. In him I saw
the beauty of holiness, but I did not feel
it. He tried to quicken my spiritual life,
to rouse me from my almost idiotic apathy,
and to turn a broken spirit upward. My
only answer to him was—"Leave me; let me
alone; let me be quiet."

My poor aunt sighed, far more heavily than
of old, and shook her head; she thought me
drifting into another world, laden with a
cargo of unrepented sin that must sink me
eternally.

"Shall we not tell her now? Would it
not be better?" she asked of the grey-headed
old man, who was turning from me disappointed,
but unwearied. He shook his
head.

"Be patient and hopeful; with our
merciful, all-pitying Father nothing is
impossible. It is not His time yet."

"But I know it! I know it!" I said to
myself, as they left me. "I am dying," and
a strange ecstasy thrilled through me.

Every day, through the long months of
early and mid summer, I was carried down
close to the sea's marge, and laid there on a
mattress in the fierce hot sun. But that sun
did not scorch or even warm me; my heart
was nigh dead, and I was always cold.

Dr. Ryton thought me sinking into life-long
idiotcy, with my frequent moan and
ceaseless complaint of cold. But I was living
a thought-life, but so faint and so deep down,
they could not know it; it was only now and
then that I was conscious of it myself.

So I lay there, day by day—following my
children with my eyes as they played upon
the beach. They did not come very near,
they were half-afraid of the still, white figure,
and of the wild eyes fixed on them day after
day.

"When will papa come home? when will
he come and play here with us?" they asked
Dr. Ryton one day.

They were hushed up and taken away, and
the words seemed to me to come back out of
a strange dream of some far past.

I remember that often I held up my hand
feebly between my eyes and the sun, a gesture
they did not understand. I wanted to
watch how daily it grew more transparent,
for I became thinner, paler, more shadowy
day by day. The bright sun never burnt my
white, sickly skin. For a long time they
thought me dying, thought my brain was
dead already.

Thank Thee for this most chiefly among
Thy tender and numberless mercies, O God,
I thank Thee for this most fervently. I did
not die, I lived!

Summer was not yet wearing into autumn,
when my noble boy, my first-born, my young
Harold, was taken ill. They did not know
that I understood them, when they talked of
fever and danger in my presence. It was
resurrection day to me, the day on which I
heard them. Yet hardly so, I trust, for it
was a resurrection to a knowledge of pain and
a dread of death.

Their words sounded thunder-loud in my
ears, which lately had received sound very
faintly and sense very vaguely. They stunned
me only for an instant. I think my gradual
fading away had been half-voluntary, for I
was often dimly conscious that I had yet the
power within me to rise and live. And now
I rose up! It was wet, I think, that day, for
I was laid on the couch by a fire; they had
spoken and gone away.

I got up; I could stand; I walked from
the room. In the passage I met a servant,
who started back in affright, and ran to call
assistance. But I crawled up-stairs and
found my way to my child's room, and went
in and up to his little bed.

"Let her alone," I heard Dr. Ryton say, as
my aunt started forward and was hastening
to me. I thanked him most truly for those
words. My boy turned to me with a cry of
"Mamma, mamma!" I was very weak and I
sank down on his bed and his fever-flushed
cheek was laid on my cold bosom. They let
me stay: my boy fell quietly asleep—the
first sleep he had had that had been quiet
and refreshing since he was taken ill, they
said.

He woke better. I watched him night and
day; new life came to me a second time
through him. And he loved me so! He
would not suffer any one else to wait on him.
And I watched the waning and waxing of the
fever night and day: and the danger seemed
over. The child grew worse and died. In
my brief joy I had not turned to God; in my
deep fresh agony I did not turn to him.

I could not sink back into the oblivion of
my death in life. I sat watching by the dead
beauty of my once so bold, bright boy: they
talked of Heaven, hope, faith, meeting and
consolation. I heard, but heeded not at all.
My grief was fierce and passionate at first; I
laid the child's dead-cold hand on my heart,
but it could not freeze nor still it. I was outwardly
quiet, lest they should think me mad
again; but my heart burned, and night and
day my spirit cried:

"Oh! Cruel! Cruel and Pitiless!" it
raved against the Omnipotent; it lashed
itself into impotent fury against the Will of
the Great, Calm, and Just One.

My little girl they had sent away, but too
late. She fell ill, and they brought her home.
I would not believe it was the fever; she
was always delicate, a little white blossom,
and she had pined and fretted for her