with us for a few hours at least? I should like to have seen his pretty
eyes and to have seen him just once with him lips parted; as it was,
they were closed in the sweet, silent smile of death.

"Papa, what name should you have given him had he lived?" I asked.

"Your mother's favorite name--Gerald," he replied. "Ah, Laura, had he
lived, poor little fellow, he would have been 'Sir Gerald Tayne, of
Tayne Abbey.' How much dies in a child--who knows what manner of man
this child might have been or what he might have done?"

"Papa, what is the use of such a tiny life?" I asked.

"Not even a philosopher could answer that question," said my father.

I kissed the sweet, baby face again and again. "Good-by, my little
brother," I said. Ah! where shall I see his face again?




CHAPTER IV.


My mother was in danger and my baby brother dead. The gloom that lay
over our house was something never to be forgotten; the silence that was
never broken by one laugh or one cheerful word, the scared faces--for
every one loved "my lady." One fine morning, when the snowdrops had
grown more plentiful, and there was a faint sign of the coming spring in
the air, they took my baby brother to bury him. Such a tiny coffin, such