rd a smothered voice breathe out, Water,
Water! several times; and then again a sigh heaved from the heart of the
sufferer. The old woman shuddered, she contrived at length to sit upright;
but her teeth chattered, and her knees knocked together--close, very
close, lay a half-naked figure, just discernible in the gloom, and the cry
for water and the stifled moan were again uttered. Her motions at length
attracted the attention of her unknown companion; her hand was seized with
a convulsive violence that made the grasp feel like iron, the fingers like
the keen teeth of a trap.--"At last you are come!" were the words given
forth--but this exertion was the last effort of the dying--the joints
relaxed, the figure fell prostrate, one low moan, the last, marked the
moment of death. Morning broke; and the old woman saw the corpse, marked
with the fatal disease, close to her; her wrist was livid with the hold
loosened by death. She felt struck by the plague; her aged frame was unable
to bear her away with sufficient speed; and now, believing herself
infected, she no longer dreaded the association of others; but, as swiftly
as she might, came to her grand-daughter, at Windsor Castle, there to
lament and die. The sight was horrible; still she clung to life, and
lamented her mischance with cries and hideous groans; while the swift
advance of the disease shewed, what proved to be the fact, that she could
not survive many hours.

While I was directing that the necessary care should be taken of her, Clara
came in; she was trembling and pale; and, when I anxiously asked her the
cause of her agitation, she threw herself into my arms weeping and
exclaiming--"Uncle, dearest uncle, do not hate me for ever! I must tell
you, for you must know, that Evelyn, poor little Evelyn"--her voice was
choked by sobs. The fear of so mighty a calamity as the loss of our adored
infant made the current of my blood pause with chilly horror; but the
remembrance of the mother restored my presence of mind. I sought the little
bed of my darling; he was oppressed by fever; but I trusted, I fondly and
fearfully trusted, that there were no symptoms of the plague. He was not
three years old, and his illness appeared only one of those attacks
incident to infancy. I watched him long--his heavy half-closed lids, his
burning cheeks and restless twining of his small fingers--the fever was
violent, the torpor complete--enough, without the greater fear of
pestilence, to aw