"Come in--say you forgive him! Oh, you need not fear him; a babe could
not fear him now!"

Caroline followed Arabella into the sick-room. No untidiness there; all
so carefully, thoughtfully arranged. A pleasant room, too--with windows
looking full on the sunniest side of the Vale of Health; the hearth so
cheerily clear, swept so clean--the very ashes out of sight; flowers--
costly exotics--on the table, on the mantelpiece; the couch drawn towards
the window; and on that couch, in the gay rich dressing-gown of former
days, warm coverlets heaped on the feet, snow-white pillows propping the
head, lay what at first seemed a vague, undistinguishable mass--lay what,
as the step advanced, and the eye became more accurately searching, grew
into Jasper Losely.

Yes, there, too weak indeed for a babe to fear, lay all that was left of
the Strong Man! No enemy but himself had brought him thus low-
spendthrift, and swindler, and robber of his own priceless treasures-
Health and Strength--those grand rent-rolls of joy which Nature had made
his inheritance. As a tree that is crumbling to dust under the gnarls of
its bark seems, the moment ere it falls, proof against time and the
tempest, so, within all decayed, stood that image of strength-so, air
scarcely stirring, it fell. "And the pitcher was broken at the fountain;
and the wheel was broken at the cistern; vanity of vanities, saith the
Preacher."

Jasper turned his dull eye towards Caroline, as she came softly to his
side, and looked at her with a piteous gaze. The stroke that had
shattered the form had spared the face; and illness and compulsory
abstinence from habitual stimulants had taken from the aspect much of the
coarseness--whether of shape or colour--that of late years had disfigured