other's honour was at stake. Besides, terror held me back; I felt that
I should die if I spoke. Childhood has such terrors and such heroisms.
Silence often covers in such, abysses of thought and feeling which
astonish us in later years. There is no suffering like a child's,
terrified by a secret which it dare not for some reason disclose.

"Events aided me. When, in desperation to see once more the light and
all the things which linked me to life--my little bed, the toys on the
window-sill, my squirrel in its cage--I forced myself to retraverse the
empty house, expecting at every turn to hear my father's voice or come
upon the image of my mother--yes, such was the confusion of my mind,
though I knew well enough even then that they were dead and that I
should never hear the one or see the other. I was so benumbed with the
cold in my half-dressed condition, that I woke in a fever next morning
after a terrible dream which forced from my lips the cry of 'Mother!
Mother!'--only that.

"I was cautious even in delirium. This delirium and my flushed cheeks
and shining eyes led them to be very careful of me. I was told that my
mother was away from home; and when after two days of search they were
quite sure that all effort to find either her or my father were likely
to prove fruitless, that she had gone to Europe where we would follow
her as soon as I was well. This promise, offering as it did, a prospect
of immediate release from the terrors which were consuming me, had an
extraordinary effect upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was
well now and ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse
equable, and my whole condition wonder fully improved, and attributing
it, as was natural, to my hope of soon joining my mother, advised
my whim to be humoured and this hope kept active till travel and
intercourse with children should give me strength and prepare me for
the bitter truth ultimately awaiting me. They listened to him and
in twenty-four hours our preparations were made. We saw the house
closed--with what emotions surging in one small breast, I leave you to
imagine--and then started on our long tour. For five years we wandered
over the continent of Europe, my grandfather finding distraction, as
well as myself, in foreign scenes and associations.

"But return was inevitable. What I suffered on reentering this house,
God and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery been made in
our absence; or wou