Herbert blessed her humane tolerance in his alarmed heart, when

Mabel awoke from her troubled slumbers at midnight, in extreme pain,

that culminated before dawn, in convulsions.

Two physicians were hastily summoned, and when Mrs. Sutton arrived

about noon, she met Phillis outside the door of the sick-chamber,

carrying a lifeless infant in her arms, and weeping bitterly.

This was the end of the months of hopeful longing and glad

anticipation which were Heaven's messengers of healing and comfort

to the sick and lonely heart. The cunningly-fashioned robes were

never to have a wearer, the clasping arms to remain still empty. Oh

wondrous mystery--past finding out--of the human soul! Had the lungs

once heaved with breath, the heart given one throb; the eyes caught

one beam of Heaven's light ere they were sealed fast in eternal

darkness, she, who travailed with the infant through the

inexpressible agony of birth, would have been written a mother among

women; have had the right accorded her, without the cavil of

formalist or the disputations of science, to claim the precious

thing as her own still--a living baby-spirit that had fluttered back

to the bosom of the Almighty Father, after alighting, for one

painful moment, upon the confines of the lower world. As it was,

custom ordained that there should be no mourning for what had never

really been. Anguish, hope, and the patient love at which we do not

scoff when the mother-bird broods over the eggs that may never

hatch--these were to be no more named or remembered. In silence and

without sympathy she must endure her disappointment. The tenderest

woman about whose knees cluster living children, and who has sowed

in tears the blessed seed, that in the resurrection-morn shall be

gathered in beauteous sheaves of richest recompense--would smile in

pitying contempt over the tiny headstone which should be

lettered--"Born Dead."

All this and much more Mabel was to learn with the return of health

and reason, but she lay now, like one who had passed for herself the

narrow sea that separates the Now from the Hereafter; her features

chiselled into the unmoving outlines of a waxen image, only a feeble

flutter of breath and pulse telling that this was lethargy, not

death. They watched her all night, Mrs. Sutton on one side and

Phillis on the other, the family physician stealing in with

slippered tread from hour to hour, to note with his sensitive touch

if the few poor drops of vital blood yet trickled from veins to

heart, always with the same directions, "Give her the stimulant

while she can swallow it. It is the only hope of saving her."




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