hurts him to swallow. I lay the little head back upon the pillow, I do not kiss him or speak to him; I fall down on my knees by his side. Wattie! . . . Wattie! . . . God has taken all else on earth from me, and now he is beckoning you . . . my darling! . . . my darling! . . .
Half an hour later and a man has returned from Pimpernel with the doctor; an hour and he is gone again. He can do no more for the only son of Paul Vasher than the son of a cottager; a few days, or hours even, will determine the issue.
"It is in God's hands," say the servants, as they move to and fro, and the words sound to me in my agony like direst mockery. If it be in His hands, why need He have stricken my flower, my treasure, my ewe-lamb? Somebody takes away the telegrams that I send to the father and mother—though why should they come here? They never spoke to my darling in life, why should they come to look on him now he is going away? He is mine now, mine; he wants no one else. And I send the servants and every one away out of the room (I believe they think I am mad), and with the simple remedies they have left for him I take him in my arms and hang over him, hour after hour, watching every change in his face, every throb of his pulses . . . and his beautiful dumb eyes seek mine piteously in his new unknown misery . . . he cannot understand it . . . he never suffered any pain or oppression before . . . he seems puzzled and afraid, and if I leave him for a moment he calls after me, "Lallie! Lallie!" not with the old merry voice, but in a sharp, altered note, that makes my heart stand still.
The doctor comes and goes; he spends half his time fighting with the grim enemy over this little, resisting frame. A nurse takes up her station in the room, but she never touches him; he takes everything alike from my hand. He has still some hopes of the child, the doctor says, and calls in a greater man than he, and
