with all speed accompanied me back to the unhappy
home. Entering the door, our ears were greeted
with a shriek that came piercing down the hall till
the very echoes shuddered as with fear. It was the
patient's voice shrilling from the sleeper's room up
stairs:--"O God! My boy! my boy! I want my
boy, and he will not waken for me!" An instant
later we were both upon the scene.

The woman in her frenzy had broken from the
servant to find her son. And she had found him.

She had wound her arms about him, and had
dragged his still sleeping form upon the floor. He
would not waken, even though she gripped him to
her heart and shrieked her very soul out in his ears.
He would not waken. The face, though whiter
than her own, betokened only utter rest and peace.
We drew her, limp and voiceless, from his side.
"We are too late," the doctor whispered, lifting with
his finger one of the closed lids, and letting it drop
to again.--"See here!" He had been feeling at the
wrist; and, as he spoke, he slipped the sleeve up,
bared the sleeper's arm. From the wrist to elbow it
was livid purple, and pitted and scarred with minute
wounds--some scarcely scaled as yet with clotted
blood.

"In heaven's name, what does it all mean?" I
asked.