"I will go back and make up a composing draught; and while I am away you
must get her to bed."

Susan took out some of her own clothes, and softly undressed the stiff,
powerless form. There was no other bed in the house but the one in which
her father slept. So she tenderly lifted the body of her darling; and
was going to take it downstairs, but the mother opened her eyes, and
seeing what she was about, she said--"I am not worthy to touch her, I am
so wicked. I have spoken to you as I never should have spoken; but I
think you are very good. May I have my own child to lie in my arms for a
little while?"

Her voice was so strange a contrast to what it had been before she had
gone into the fit, that Susan hardly recognised it: it was now so
unspeakably soft, so irresistibly pleading; the features too had lost
their fierce expression, and were almost as placid as death. Susan could
not speak, but she carried the little child, and laid it in its mother's
arms; then, as she looked at them, something overpowered her, and she
knelt down, crying aloud--"Oh, my God, my God, have mercy on her, and
forgive and comfort her."

But the mother kept smiling, and stroking the little face, murmuring
soft, tender words, as if it were alive. She was going mad, Susan
thought; but she prayed on, and on, and ever still she prayed with
streaming eyes.

The doctor came with the draught. The mother took it, with docile
unconsciousness of its nature as medicine. The doctor sat by her; and
soon she fell asleep. Then he rose softly, and beckoning Susan to the