THE
OLD
STONE
MANSION.
BY CHARLES J. PETERSON, AUTHOR OF “THE VALLEY FARM,” ‘‘MABEL,” ‘KATE AYLESFORD,” AC.
[Entered according to Act of Congress. in the year 1859, by Charles J. Peterson. in the Clerk's Olfice of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.]
CHAPTER I.
“Margaret,” said my mother, feebly.
I glided to her bedside joyfully, for she had slept so long I had begun to be frightened. I kissed her, arranged the bed-clothes, and softly smoothed her hair.
She looked up at me with a wan smile. I remember that wasted, yet beautiful face as if this had happened but yesterday.
“Does it snow yet?” she said.
I stepped to the window. The storm, which had raged all day and during moat of the preceding night, had subsided. The sun was just setting, and the snow-bankes, which had drifted, here and there, against the houses on the opposite side of the street, were tinged with a delicate rose-color. A few flakes, blown from the roofs, floated lazily down. The shouts of the boys, playing snow-ball, came to the ear with a muffled sound.
“It is clear, mamma,” I answered, “and so pretty. I hear sleigh-bells.” And I did not turn my head, but waited, child-like, to see the sleigh, for I was but six years old.
“Thank God!” she answered, with a sigh of relief. “He will surely come now.”
Her tone made me look quickly around. How dark and close the room appeared!
“Who will come, mamma?” I asked.
She did not answer. She did not even raise. her eyes. She saw something on the bed-quilt apparently, which she tried vainly to pick off.
“Mamma!” I said, taking her hand, with a feeling of vague alarm.
She looked at me like one in a dream. Slowly her wandering faculties seemed to come back.
“You are cold,” she said.
I was both cold and hungry. I had eaten nothing all day, nor had there been any fire. I gave one quick glance toward the dead ashes in the stove, to see if they were visible from her pillow; and finding they were not, answered, evasively, with the forethought which care and sorrow had already taught me,
“I feel cold to you, because you have a fever.”
“Yes! I must have had fever all day, to have slept. I did. I am very thirsty now. Won't you take the pitcher and bring me some fresh water from the pump?”
At aay other time I would have ebrunk from the task. I dreaded the long, dark entry of the strange boarding-house, and the rude boys in the street. Bust now I rose with alacrity.
“Stay, darling,” she said, ae I was about to go. I approached the bed-side. She took my head feebly in ber hands, drew my face toward her, kissed me, held me a little off, and earnestly regarded me. Her mouth began to quiver: the tears gathered in her eyes.
“Poor little lamb!” she said. Then, lifting her dimmed sight to the ceiling, she murmured, “Father in heaven, protect my orphaned child!”
It took me some time to reach the pump, for I had to break a path through the snow, no easy task for my tender feet. I was a long while, afterward, in filling my pitcher, for the pump worked with difficulty. I saw a big, ill-looking boy standing on the opposite corner, working up a snow-ball vigorously in his hands and eyeing me menacingly. At last the pitcher was filled, and I stooped to raise it. At that moment, whis! came the snow-ball, as hard as ice, hitting me on the wrist. I fell, and the pitcher, striking the pump, was broken into pieces.
The pain in my wrist was so acute, that I believed it was broken. But rage and indignation was, nevertheless, my first impulse. “Oh! if I was a man,” I said to myself, as I struggled up, half smothered with snow. I heard a jeering laugh. But catching sight of the broken pitcher, I remembered it was the only one we had; I thought of my mother’s thirat; and at that thought I burst into tears.
“Boo—hoo—hoo,” mocked the boy, flinging another snow-ball, which hit me on the cheek.
He stopped suddenly. I heard a heavy blow. I looked toward him. He was struggling up out of a snow-drift, while another lad, about the same size, but of a very different aspect, was standing over him, roiling up his sleeves, as boys do when about to fight. The mute challenge, however, was not accepted. The bully got up, spluttering and cursing; but one look at his antagonist was sufficient; he burst into a
