haunting me. Often the child's eyes, as they
looked up at me, when I bent over it.
I have fancied since that it would have
spoken to me then, complained of pain,
but for the mother being always close and
within hearing. I have fancied since, that
it looked at me, with that intent look,
hoping that I should understand.

A poor sickly tree—I think a sycamore—
grew outside one of the windows of the
ward in which the child lay. It was swaying
and swinging in the evening wind and
evening sunlight, and its shadow was
waving to and fro on the child's bed when
I went into the ward on the afternoon of
that third day.

The child liked to watch the shadow and
had begged not to have the blind pulled
down.

"Had I best wake her?" Mrs. Rosscar
asked me, the moment I approached the
bed. She was looking strained to-day,
and anxious. " It is rather long since she
took nourishment. And last time she was
awake, I thought she seemed more weak and
faint than she has seemed since Monday."

"When was she last awake?"

Mrs. Rosscar looked at her watch.

"Half an hour and three minutes ago;
but she took nothing then, for she smiled
at me, and then dozed off, just as I was
going to give her her arrowroot and wine.
It is an hour and a half since she had
anything."

"By all means wake her," I said. It
struck me that her little face looked
pinched and cold. " The sleep of
exhaustion will do her no good," I added.

Mrs. Rosscar bent her face over the
child's face. I stood by, with my heart
striking sledge-hammer blows against me.

"Mamma wants her darling to wake up
and take some wine," she said, with her
cheek lying against the child's cheek.

No movement or murmur of reply.

Lifting her head, and looking into my
face, she said, in what then seemed to me
an awful voice:

"She is very cold!"

I pushed the mother aside, I bent over
the child, I felt for its pulse, watched for
its breath. In vain.

I ordered flannels to be heated, and the
little body to be wrapped in them and
rubbed with them. I tried every means
I knew of, for restoring animation.

In vain.

While the mother was preparing food
for it, the child, having smiled at her,
had fallen into a doze. That doze was the
doze of death.

When we desisted from our efforts to
wake it, and left the poor tortured little
body in peace, Mrs. Rosscar, who had been
kneeling by the bed, rose. She stood
motionless and speechless for moments that
seemed to me no portion of time, but an
experience of eternity.

I resolved that I would not meet her eyes;
but she was the stronger willed, and our eyes
did meet. I shrank; I shivered; I looked,
I know, abject, craven, self- convicted. I
felt I was the murderer she thought me.

Slowly, with her eyes on mine which
watched her with a horrible fascination,
she lifted her grand arms, and clasped her
hands above her head.

The uplifted arms, the awful eyes, the
indefinite horror of that pause before
speech were enough for me.

As her lips opened, to give utterance to
the first words of her curse, I, lifting my
own arms, as if to ward off from my head an
imminent blow (they told me afterwards
of these things), and struggling for power to
articulate some deprecation—I, meeting her
eyes with unspeakable horror in my own,
staggered a moment, then fell, as if she
had struck me down.

Now Ready, price 5s. 6d., bound in green cloth,

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MR. CHARLES DICKENS'S FINAL READINGS.

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