even, full of life
and vigour, to the emaciated boy of twelve, whose face was prematurely old,
and, unshaded by the once abundant hair, which had been close cropped to
his head, looked ghostly and unfamiliar.

Still, he was hers once more, and she took off the ragged black gown, which
had been the uniform of the scholars of the Jesuit school, and was now only
fit for the fire, and taking off her own cloak, she wrapped him in it,
bathed his face with water, put the herb cordial to his lips, and then,
setting herself on an old chair, the only furniture in the tumbledown
attic, she raised Ambrose on her knees, and, whispering loving words and
prayers over him, hungered for a sign of recognition.

Evidently the poor boy's weary brain was awakened by some magnetic power to
a consciousness that some lost clue of his happy childhood had been
restored to him.

As his head lay against his mother's breast the rest there was apparently
sweet.

He sighed as if contented, closed his eyes and slept.

Mary dare not move or scarcely breathe, lest she should disturb the slumber
in which, as she gazed upon his face, the features of her lost child seemed
to come out with more certain likeness to her Ambrose of past years.

For a smile played round the scarlet lips, and the long, dark fringe of the
lashes resting on his cheeks, brought back the many times in the old home
when she had seen them shadow the rounded rosy cheeks of his infant days.

A mother's love knows no weariness, and, as the hours passed and Ambrose
still slept, Mary forgot her aching back and arms, her forlorn position in
that desolate attic, even the painful ordeal she had gone through by her
husband's dying bed--forgot everything but the joy that, whether for life
or death, her boy was restored to her.

At last Ambrose stirred, and the smile faded from his lips. He raised his
head and gazed up into the face bending over him.

'I dreamed,' he faltered; 'I dreamed I saw my _mother_--my _mother_.' He
repeated the word with a feeble cry--_my mother_; 'but it's only a dream. I
have no mother but the blessed Virgin, and she--she is so far, far away, up
in Heaven.'

'Ambrose, my sweetheart, my son!' Mary said gently. 'I am not far away; I
am here! Your own mother.'

'It's good of you to come down from Heaven, mother; take me--take me back
with you. I am so--so weary--weary; and I can't say all the Latin prayers
to you; I can't.'

'Ambrose,' poor Mary said, 'you n