only female child--was clinging to her father's neck, her face pressed
to his bosom, and in that room her sobs alone were loud.

As I passed the threshold, Dr. Lloyd lifted his face, which had been
bent over the weeping child, and gazed on me with an aspect of strange
glee, which I failed to interpret. Then as I stole towards him softly
and slowly, he pressed his lips on the long fair tresses that streamed
wild over his breast, motioned to a nurse who stood beside his pillow to
take the child away, and in a voice clearer than I could have expected in
one on whose brow lay the unmistakable hand of death, he bade the nurse
and the children quit the room. All went sorrowfully, but silently, save
the little girl, who, borne off in the nurse's arms, continued to sob as
if her heart were breaking.

I was not prepared for a scene so affecting; it moved me to the
quick. My eyes wistfully followed the children so soon to be orphans, as
one after one went out into the dark chill shadow, and amidst the
bloodless forms of the dumb brute nature, ranged in grisly vista beyond
the death-room of man. And when the last infant shape had vanished, and
the door closed with a jarring click, my sight wandered loiteringly
around the chamber before I could bring myself to fix it on the broken
form, beside which I now stood in all that glorious vigour of frame which
had fostered the pride of my mind. In the moment consumed by my mournful
survey, the whole aspect of the place impressed itself ineffaceably on
lifelong remembrance. Through the high, deepsunken casement, across
which the thin, faded curtain was but half drawn, the moonlight rushed,
and then settled on the floor in one shroud of white glimmer, lost under
the gloom of the death-bed. The roof was low, and seemed lower still by
heavy intersecting beams, which I might have touched with my lifted hand.
And the tall guttering candle by the bedside, and the flicker from the