darling; don't cry out so loudly--there--there--my own love."

The child did not appear to see or hear her, but sate up still with
feverish cheeks, and bright unsteady eyes, while her dry lips were
muttering inaudible words.

"Lie down, my sweet child--lie down, for your own mother," she said;
"if you tire yourself, you can't grow well, and your poor mother will
lose you."

At these words, the child suddenly cried out again, in precisely the same
loud, strong voice--"No! no! the baby first, the baby first"--and
immediately afterwards lay down, and fell, for the first time since her
illness into a tranquil sleep.

My good little wife sate, crying bitterly by her bedside. The child was
better--_that_ was, indeed, delightful. But then there was an omen in the
words, thus echoed from her dream, which she dared not trust herself to
interpret, and which yet had seized, with a grasp of iron, upon every
fibre of her brain.

"Oh, Richard," she cried, as she threw her arms about my neck, "I am
terrified at this horrible menace from the unseen world. Oh! poor,
darling little baby, I shall lose you--I am sure I shall lose you.
Comfort me, darling, and say he is not to die."

And so I did; and tasked all my powers of argument and persuasion to
convince her how unsubstantial was the ground of her anxiety. The little
boy was perfectly well, and, even were he to die before his sister that
event might not occur for seventy years to come. I could not, however,