llow, he looked up at
me with that grateful, sweet look with which children, when they are ill,
break one's heart, the water coming into his eyes in his weakness. "I was
sure as soon as you were here you would know what to do," he said.

"To be sure, my boy. Now keep quiet, and tell it all out like a man." To
think I was telling lies to my own child! for I did it only to humor him,
thinking, poor little fellow, his brain was wrong.

"Yes, father. Father, there is some one in the park--some one that has
been badly used." "Hush, my dear; you remember there is to be no
excitement. Well, who is this somebody, and who has been ill-using him?
We will soon put a stop to that."

"All," cried Roland, "but it is not so easy as you think. I don't know
who it is. It is just a cry. Oh, if you could hear it! It gets into my
head in my sleep. I heard it as clear--as clear; and they think that I
am dreaming, or raving perhaps," the boy said, with a sort of
disdainful smile.

This look of his perplexed me; it was less like fever than I thought.
"Are you quite sure you have not dreamed it, Roland?" I said.

"Dreamed?--that!" He was springing up again when he suddenly bethought
himself, and lay down flat, with the same sort of smile on his face. "The
pony heard it, too," he said. "She jumped as if she had been shot. If I
had not grasped at the reins--for I was frightened, father--"

"No shame to you, my boy," said I, though I scarcely knew why.

"If I hadn't held to her like a leech, she'd have pitched me over her
head, and never drew breath till we were at the door. Did the pony dream
it?" he said, with a soft disdain, yet indulgence for my foolishness.
Then he added slowly, "It was only a cry the first time, and all the
time before you went away. I wouldn't tell you, for it was so wretched
to be frightened. I thought it might be a hare or a rabbit snared, and I
went in the morning and looked; but there was nothing. It was after you
went I heard it really first; and this is what he says." He raised
himself on his elbow close to me, and looked me in the face: "'Oh,
mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!'" As he said the words a mist
came over his face, the mouth quivered, the soft features all melted and
changed, and when he had ended these pitiful words, dissolved in a
shower of heavy tears.

Was it a hallucination? Was it the fever of the brain? Was it the
disordered fancy caused by great bodily weakness? How could I tell? I