"Andrew!" she called, in a low, tender voice.

But there was no reply.

"Andrew!"

Still all remained silent.

More accustomed to the feeble light that pervaded the chamber, Mrs.
Howland now perceived her boy in a corner, sitting upon the floor,
with his head reclining upon a low ottoman. He was asleep. Placing
the tray she had brought upon a table, Mrs. Howland lifted the child
in her arms, and as she did so, he murmured in a sad voice--

"Don't, papa! oh, don't strike so hard!"

Unable to repress her feelings, the mother's tears gushed over her
cheeks, and her bosom heaved with emotions that spent themselves in
sobs and moans.

For many minutes she sat thus. But the child slept on. Once or twice
she tried to awake him, that he might get the supper she had
brought; but he slept on soundly, and she refrained, unwilling to
call him back to the grief of mind she felt that consciousness would
restore. Undressing him, at length, she laid him in his bed, and
bending over his precious form in the deeper darkness that had now
fallen, lifted her heart, and prayed that God would keep him from
evil. For a long time did she bend thus over her boy, and longer
still would she have remained near him, for her heart was affected