lip, and whispers poor Charlie's name. The Doctor you see
too, slipping softly out of the bedroom-door, with glasses in his hand;
and--you hardly know how--your spirits grow sad, and your heart
gravitates to the heavy air of all about you.

You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says;--and you cannot in the quiet parlor
tell Nelly a single one of the many things, which you had hoped to tell
her. She says,--"Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, you would never
know him." You listen to her, but you cannot talk: she asks you what you
have seen, and you begin, for a moment joyously; but when they open the
door of the sick-room, and you hear a faint sigh, you cannot go on. You
sit still, with your hand in Nelly's, and look thoughtfully into the
blaze.

You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with singular and perplexed
fancies haunting you; and when you wake up with a shudder in the middle
of the night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really dead: you dream of
seeing him pale and thin, as Nelly described him, and with the starched
grave-clothes on him. You toss over in your bed, and grow hot and
feverish. You cannot sleep; and you get up stealthily, and creep
down-stairs. A light is burning in the hall: the bedroom-door stands
half open, and you listen--fancying you hear a whisper. You steal on
through the hall, and edge around the side of the door. A little lamp is
flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies dark
upon the ceiling. Your mother is in her chair with her head upon her
hand--though it is long after midnight. The Doctor is standing with his
back toward you, and with Charlie's little wrist in his fingers; and you
hear hard breathing, and now and then a low sigh from your mother's
chair.

An occasional gleam of firelight makes the gaunt shadows stagger on the
wall, like something spectral. You look wildly at them, and at the bed
where your own brother--your laughing, gay-hearted brother--is lying.
You long to see him, and sidle up softly a step or two; but your
mother's ear has caught the sound, and she beckons you to her, and folds
you again in her embrace. You whisper to her what you wish. She rises,
and takes you by the hand, to lead you to the bedside.

The Doctor looks very solemnly as we approach. He takes out his watch.
He is not counting Charlie's pulse, for he has dropped his hand, and it
lies carelessly, but oh, how thin! over the edge of the bed.

He shakes his head mournfully