nches back, along the top
of the head. As soon as the blood stains were wiped away, and the
effusion partially stopped, Mrs. Slade carried the still insensible
body into the next room, whither the distressed, and now completely
sobered father, accompanied her. I went with them, but Slade remained
behind.

The arrival of the doctor was soon followed by the restoration of life
to the inanimate body. He happened to be at home, and came instantly.
He had just taken the last stitch in the wound, which required to be
drawn together, and was applying strips of adhesive plaster, when the
hurried entrance of some one caused me to look up. What an apparition
met my eyes! A woman stood in the door, with a face in which maternal
anxiety and terror blended fearfully. Her countenance was like
ashes--her eyes straining wildly--her lips apart, while the panting
breath almost hissed through them.

"Joe! Joe! What is it? Where is Mary? Is she dead?" were her eager
inquiries.

"No, Fanny," answered Joe Morgan, starting up from where he was
actually kneeling by the side of the reviving little one, and going
quickly to his wife. "She's better now. It's a bad hurt, but the doctor
says it's nothing dangerous. Poor, dear child!"

The pale face of the mother grew paler--she gasped--caught for breath
two or three times--a low shudder ran through her frame--and then she
lay white and pulseless in the arms of her husband. As the doctor
applied restoratives, I had opportunity to note more particularly the
appearance of Mrs. Morgan. Her person was very slender, and her face so
attenuated that it might almost be called shadowy. Her hair, which was
a rich chestnut brown, with a slight golden lustre, had fallen from her
comb, and now lay all over her neck and bosom in beautiful luxuriance.
Back from her full temples it had been smoothed away by the hand of
Morgan, that all the while moved over her brow and temples with a
caressing motion that I saw was unconscious, and which revealed the
tenderness of feeling with which, debased as he was, he regarded the
wife of his youth, and the long suffering companion of his later and
evil days. Her dress was plain and coarse, but clean and well fitting;
and about her whole person was an air of neatness and taste. She could
not now be called beautiful; yet in her marred features--marred by
suffering and grief--were many lineaments of beauty; and much that told
of a true, pure woman's heart beating in her boso