about one o'clock in the morning, and the mother was worn and haggard
from anxiety and days of watching. The members of the family, the
physician, and the pastor were standing around the bed, but the
mother was on her knees close beside the little one, who was writhing
in the most awful convulsions. Then the stricken mother looked
straight into heaven and made a personal appeal to God to come and
relieve the little fellow's sufferings. Again and again she prayed:
"Oh, God, do come and take my little boy." And the Angel of Death,
in answer to that prayer, came in and touched the baby, and he was
still.

The mother of that child may or may not know that the grandfather of
that child came into that room that night, though he had been long in
his grave, and murdered her baby--murdered him with tainted blood.
That grandfather had not lived a clean life, and so broke a mother's
heart and forced her in agony to pray for the death of her own child.

When I had finished I walked quietly away, leaving the boys to their
own thoughts, and as I walked I breathed the wish that my boys may
live such clean, wholesome, upright, temperate lives that no child or
grandchild may ever have occasion to reproach them, or point the
finger of scorn at them, and that no mother may ever pray for death
to come to her baby because of a taint in their blood.




CHAPTER XXIII

GRANDMOTHER