"You can't!" repeated the wife, and now her lips fell apart and she
gazed at her husband.

"No Lottie; you called God cruel downstairs, and now He looks cruel to
me. I can't give Him my first-born. I can't say 'Thy will be done;' but
oh!" continued the wretched man, "this is horrible, this is blasphemous.
Oh! has God indeed forsaken me?"

"No, no, no!" suddenly almost shrieked the wife; "no, no!" she repeated;
and now she had flung her arms round her husband and was straining him
to her heart. "Oh, my darling! my beloved! you were never, never, never,
so near to me, so dear to me, as now. God does not want you to say that,
Angus. Angus, it is _not_ God's will that our child should die, it is
Satan's will, not God's. God is love, and it can't be love to torture
us, and tear our darling away from us like that. The will of God is
righteousness, and love, and happiness; not darkness, and death, and
misery. Oh, Angus! let us both kneel here and say, 'Thy will be done,'
for I believe the will of God will be to save the child."

A great faith had suddenly come to this woman. She lifted her voice, and
a torrent of eloquent words, of passionate utterances, rent the air and
went up to God from that little room, and the husband stole his hand
into the wife's as she prayed. After this they both slept, and Lottie's
heart was lighter than it had ever been in all her life before.

The next morning this lightness, almost gayety of heart, was still
there. For the time she had really changed places with her husband; for,
believing that the end would be good, she felt strong to endure.

Mr. and Mrs. Home went downstairs to find Hinton regarding them
anxiously. He had not spent a long night with the sick child without
gathering very clearly how imminent was the peril still hanging over the
family. Harold's night had been a wretched one, and he was weaker this
morning. Hinton felt that a great deal more must be done to restore
Harold to health; but he had not heard what Dr. Watson had said, and was
therefore as yet in the dark and much puzzled how best to act. Seeing
the mother's face serene, almost calm, as she poured out the tea, and
the father's clouded over, he judged both wrongly.

"She is deceived," he said of the one. "He knows," he said of the other.
Had he, however, reversed the positions it would have been nearer the
truth.

He went away with a thousand schemes in his head. He would visit the
doctor. He would--could he--