eyes, the wind caressing her into peacefulness and singing her to
slumber.

* * * * *

It was the hour before dawn--the dark hour when minutes walk with
leaden feet and the departing vapours of night lay chilliest
finger on the sick and dying, and on those who watch at their
side. From the mantelshelf the lamp emitted its feeble rays, dimly
lighting the lonely chamber, and holding, as with uncertain hand,
the shadows which crowded and cowered in the distant corners and
recesses of the room, and throwing into Rembrandtesque the pallid
face of the wakeful mother, and the flushed and fevered face of
the slumbering child. The little watch beat bravely to the march
of time, eager to keep pace with that never-flagging runner; while
the quick and feeble breathing of the girl told how she was fast
losing in the race with the all-omnipotent hours. On a small table
stood two phials, in which were imprisoned dull-coloured liquids,
powerless, despite their supposed potency, to stay the hunger of
the disease so rapidly consuming the patient; and by their side
was a plate of shrivelled fruit, the departing lusciousness of
which had failed to tempt an appetite in her whose mouth was baked
with the fever that fed on its own flame. There, gathered into a
few cubic feet of space, met the great triune mystery of night, of
suffering, of sin--the unfathomable problems of the universe;
there God, the soul, and destiny, together and in silence, played
out their terribly real parts.

As Mrs. Stott looked at her daughter tossing in restless sleep,
the natal hour came back to her, and in memory she again travailed